Pottersfield Press | Publisher | Atlantic Canada

NEW RELEASES

Memoir: Conversations and Craft

The best memoirs are maps of the heart and mind, and Marjorie Simmins invites you to explore the map of your own life. Here are the probing questions and dynamic writing ideas, coupled with inspirational interviews with best-selling memoirists, to light your own imagination afire. This book is for any reader or writer who is fascinated by the renegade memoir form—personal life stories that demand to be read, refuse to be forgotten.

Waiting for the Small Ship of Desire

Allan Cooper's latest poetry collection includes some of his most personal poems, including revelations to him after the death of his mother and sharply etched emotional memories of childhood and grandparents.

Readers return to Allan Cooper's poems to be reminded of the quiet power of nature and how it can shape our lives and provide sustenance, vision, and even salvation when necessary. Here are poems to be read slowly and cherished.

Winter Road

The latest short story collection by master storyteller Wayne Curtis. Here are illuminating stories of love, heartbreak, daydreams, and expectations – fulfilled and unfulfilled. Curtis charts the lives of small-town boys and girls, men and women who struggle with the challenges and limitations of poverty, isolation, and a kind of discrimination rarely documented in fiction.

An Imperfect Healer

Every patient tells a story. Drawing on a forty-year medical career, Dr. Larry Kramer has written about some of the people he has met along the way. The stories chronicle love and loss, tragedy and comedy, and empathetically observe patients who live and die, some with courage and some with fear. These accounts frame the story of one physician's life and how it was shaped, changed, and guided by those he encountered every day.

Against the Grain

Many knew Dr. Savage as their physician. Others speak about his time as mayor of Dartmouth. Yet most remember him as Nova Scotia's twenty-third premier. From tackling the health and education systems to making turn-the-province-on-its head decisions while premier, John was determined to change the way things were done. "Against the Grain" chronicles how he fought the status quo with unwavering conviction to leave a lasting legacy that would change the province of Nova Scotia forever.

Sculpting Towards the Light

"Sculpting Towards the Light" is an intimate and insightful story of a sculptor and his work. It follows the paths of imagination and activity which gave birth to a very unique work of art. The paths are diverse and unexpected, twisting into personal history, racing forward into the future, and then resting in the euphoric moments when the mind and its thoughts no longer exist and the carving occurs as if of its own accord.

The Peddlers

This is the story of the leading roles some Nova Scotians played in the North American door-to-door sales profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "The Peddlers" takes you on a door-to-door tour of the origins of household brands like Minard’s and Sloan’s Liniment, and also chronicles a century-old Hants County murder case involving two young peddlers — one the victim, the other the perpetrator.

Fixing Broken Things

Cook offers contemplative glances and lingering views on everyday life, as if observed through a window on the weather, landscape, and appearance or disappearance of things that matter. These observations act as mirrors that reflect the self and allow the merging of inner and outer worlds. The poet's rewards are discoveries of self and other in the magic visions and sounds that arise in combinations of words, like bits of winter ice reflecting prisms of light, life, and vision.

Colours in Winter

"Colours in Winter" is a whimsical children's picture book. The child, with her two bird friends, wishes that the giant snowflakes were coloured. Everything is too white. She thinks of green frogs in the spring, enormous red strawberries in the summer, and yellow and brown leaves in the autumn. Her desire becomes true and the snowflakes are suddenly all different colours. When everything turns back to white, she makes a wonderful discovery: there is colour everywhere in the winter.

Silver Linings

Janice Landry asks the very tough question, "What are you the most grateful for?" to fifteen inspiring Canadians from five provinces and two esteemed guests from the United States. Let's face it: it's easy to be grateful when things are running smoothly. The people in "Silver Linings" have discovered that gifts may actually emerge from life's toughest challenges.

Awakening My Heart

From Andrea Miller — an editor and staff writer at Lion's Roar, the leading Buddhist magazine in the English-speaking world — comes a diverse and timeless collection of essays, articles, and interviews. Miller, whose writing is by turns earnest and irreverent, unadorned and lyrical, talks to Buddhist teachers, thinkers, writers, and celebrities about the things that matter most and she frames their wisdom with her own lived experience.

Halifax Nocturne

December 1954: the old city in winter wears its two hundred years of grime and vice without any shame. On the street, hard-drinking Halifax police detective Ray Vargas has an unfailing habit for finding trouble, and when a man is found shot to death in the back of a Chevy truck, Vargas finds more trouble than he can handle — the murdered man is his oldest friend and the husband of his lover. Vargas sets off to find a killer in a city that doesn't much want a killer to be found.

In Two Voices

Linda and Michael wrote "In Two Voices" together: it is the intimate account of Linda’s surgery with Michael as her surgeon. The story builds a piece at a time as Linda and Michael tell each other their experience and then respond to one another’s writing. As the relationship shifts from one of patient and surgeon to one of Linda and Michael as colleagues and friends, they encounter surprises as their trust and mutual understanding develop.

Elapultiek

Set in contemporary times, a young Mi’kmaw drum singer and a Euro-Nova Scotian biologist meet at dusk each day to count a population of endangered Chimney Swifts (kaktukopnji’jk). They quickly struggle with their differing views of the world. Through humour and story, the characters must come to terms with their own gifts and challenges as they dedicate efforts to the birds. Each "count night" reveals a deeper complexity of connection to land and history on a personal level.

Doing Time

Poetry can address our most intimate, frightened, hopeful selves. Langille found this to be true as she introduced poems to men and women in prison and gave writing assignments based on the discussions these poems inspired. Over and over participants shared private moments of self-awareness. The support they gave each other and the stories they told were profound. This book confirms that creative expression has a central place in the process of rehabilitation.

Pottersfield Press

Publishing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and Maritime interest books (with a focus on Mi'kmaq and African Nova Scotian) since 1979.

TRAVEL FROM HOME WITH ONE OF THESE BOOKS

Around the Province

Early one morning, a Nova Scotian woman straps on a backpack and leaves the Halifax Common to start her journey along the coastal roads of Nova Scotia. Planning to cover almost a marathon a day, she will walk the perimeter of the entire province in just under three months to raise awareness for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Brigadoon Children's Camp Society. She billets with locals each night and meets countless Nova Scotians who come out to walk with her and tell their stories.

Travels with Farley

After living in a remote Newfoundland outport and returning to Port Hope, Ontario, Claire and Farley Mowat abandoned the comforts of the mainland to live in the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They moved into a small isolated community and eventually bought a home there. Claire Mowat writes of the ups and downs of being outsiders on their island but also of their love affair with the Magdalens, with its windswept dunes, endless beaches and raw beauty.

Louisbourg or Bust

A rickety surf rig on wheels. A guide named Don Quixote. No cellphone. "Louisbourg or Bust" is RC Shaw's spandex-free pilgrimage up a haunted coastline. Fuelled by Hungry Man Stew and blind optimism, Shaw battles potholed hills and remote waves en route to the Fortress of Louisbourg. As the lark gets real, Shaw is forever changed by the gnarly soul of Nova Scotia's fogbound, fading coastline.

Waking Up In My Own Backyard

Join Sandra Phinney as she embarks on 31-day summer odyssey that takes place within a 100 kilometre radius from her home in rural Nova Scotia. This memoir is a journey of self-discovery wherein the author experiences the adventure of a lifetime in her own backyard. Two powerful themes flow throughout the narrative: the importance of friendships and the richness of rural living.

Walking the Earth's Spine

This is the adventure story of the first man to walk alone along the length of the highest mountains on earth; it is also an account of one person’s interaction with the Himalayas’ three great religions. It is a meditation on the joy of walking and as its heart, it is a literary confirmation of humankind’s ability to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.

Unpacked

In 2008, Maureen and Mitch Cobb took drastic action in the wake of the stillbirth death of their second child, Tya. They packed up two-year-old Leila and set out on a journey through Southeast Asia, a trip of courage, love, and, ultimately, redemption. They left their small town in the Maritimes to fill the silence of their grief with the noisy spice markets of Bali, the crashing waves of the Philippines, and the golden surrenders of Borneo's hot sun.

Sharing the Journey

"Sharing the Journey" tells of the author’s life and adventures from the far reaches of Canada to Lesotho in Southern Africa and from Slovakia to Alaska. Always an independent and mindful thinker, prepared to take the road that best suited his skills and beliefs, Jim shares what he has learned during his years working at 25 different jobs from farmer to university professor.

Seven Grains of Paradise

"Seven Grains of Paradise" tells the fascinating and much neglected story about many kinds of food in Africa, a continent with a rich farming tradition, intricate cuisines, and a multitude of food cultures. From the fabled city of Timbuktu on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert to the rainforests of Central Africa, readers are invited along on a delightful journey of learning, eating, and some drinking too, of invigorating indigenous beverages, brews, and palm wine straight from the trees.

Random Shots

David Mossman, aided by diaries and recordings across the years, shares with vivid insight his travelling experiences in and around Lesotho, Northwest Territories, Gabon, the Bay of Fundy, Australia, the Congo, Zambia, Nunavut, New Zealand, the offshore Atlantic Ocean, Ontario, and Brazil.
Survival - the act of staying alive despite the odds - is the theme of the book.

IN THE NEWS

April 9, 2020: A Q&A with author Marjorie Simmons on the importance of memoir.
March 24, 2020: An article about Carole Glasser Langille's book "Doing Time: Writing Workshops in Prison."
January 6, 2020: A review of Andrea Miller's "Awakening My Heart" by Buddhist Book Reviews.
November 21, 2019: A review of Blain Henshaw's "The Peddlers" by The Miramichi Reader
November 6, 2019: Janice Landry speaks to Stephanie Beaumont of the Sea and Be Scene and Heard Podcast about her new book "Silver Linings"
August 23, 2019: Author Larry Kramer discusses his upcoming book "An Imperfect Healer"
August 13, 2019: A review of Shalan Joudry's "Elapultiek"
July 28, 2019: Book Launch of Emily Taylor Smith's "Around the Province in 88 Days"
April 16, 2019: Book Launch of David Mossman's "The Legend of Gladee's Canteen"
November 15, 2018: RC Shaw's interview with CBC Cape Breton about his new book, "Louisbourg or Bust"
May 23, 2018: This is a great article about author Janice Landry and her book "The Legacy Letters" written by Mary Campbell of the Cape Breton Spectator.

UPCOMING EVENTS

May 26, 2020 at 7pm: Janice Landry (author of Silver Linings) will be presenting an online author reading with the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library. More details on how to access the reading can be found here.

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Elapultiek

Set in contemporary times, a young Mi’kmaw drum singer and a Euro-Nova Scotian biologist meet at dusk each day to count a population of endangered Chimney Swifts (kaktukopnji’jk). They quickly struggle with their differing views of the world. Through humour and story, the characters must come to terms with their own gifts and challenges as they dedicate efforts to the birds. Each "count night" reveals a deeper complexity of connection to land and history on a personal level.