Pottersfield Press | Publisher | Atlantic Canada

NEW RELEASES

Rum Tales: Down Home Yarns Around a Pot-Bellied Stove

Arthur Benjamin Lohnes was proprietor of a small country store known locally as The Shop in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, from 1919 through 1957. AB provided a welcoming haven to people eager to indulge in the venerable art of loafing and storytelling. The yarns were spun by some of the most colourful characters of the time, with the storytellers ranging from grizzled old blue water sea captains through ordinary seamen to shore fishermen, a preacher, store owner, and a part-time postmaster.

Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

This is a travel memoir about a 40,000 nautical mile adventure that spans seventeen years.
When Jennifer and her husband Nik begin to imagine a life outside the norm, they seize on the idea of long-distance sailing as the perfect way to journey down a road less travelled. This is a story about the importance of starting and the acceptance of an imperfect plan. It is a tale of the triumph of conviction: if you believe that you'll figure it out when you get there, it's amazing how far you can go.

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.

Gold Winner of the 2020 "The Very Best!" Book Awards in the Non-fiction category.

Mean Streets

Following WWII, a new generation of politicians and planners across North America set out to reimagine their cities. They proposed that cities tear down great swaths of their aged and decaying homes in an effort they called "slum clearance." These "slums" were also populated by the most vulnerable members of the city, those who had little power to make their own decisions and determine their own fate.
Author Steven Laffoley set off in search of the city that existed before this "urban renewal."

While Crossing the Field

This is Deborah Banks's debut book of poetry. Her poems take us out onto the land where experiences in the natural world are filtered through the internal landscape of longing, presence, gratitude, and attentiveness. From the lowly spider to the vast expanse of the Atlantic below her house, the poet invites us to consider who we are when everything in our bustling world is removed and we are left with the greatest expanse of all: the Now and how it can inform our every breath.

Teaching at the Top of the World

Odette Barr and her partner, YoAnne Beauchamp, spent nearly ten years completely immersed in Inuit culture in the decade prior to the official birth of Nunavut Territory. This is the account of their experiences as teachers and community members in Pangnirtung, Hall Beach, and Grise Fiord. Odette and YoAnne learned quickly that to be successful northern teachers, you must enter into the lives of your students and their rich culture in meaningful and significant ways.

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.

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.

Pottersfield Press

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

BOOKS TO SUPPORT BLACK AUTHORS & LEARN BLACK NOVA SCOTIAN HISTORY

The Way We Hold On

This is Abena Beloved Green's debut book of poetry. Her poems address cultural, social, and environmental issues, relationships, and reflect on everyday life as a small-town raised, semi-nomadic, first-generation Canadian. Here are poems about holding on and letting go—of ideas, opinions, beliefs, people, places, and things.

Righting the Wrongs

During his 50 years in Nova Scotia, Gus Wedderburn fought social injustice in his home province. A driving force for many years in the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, he was a founder of the Black Educators Association, the Black United Front, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, and the Black Cultural Centre. Gus was a vocal crusader for the rights of the disadvantaged at a time when discrimination in education, employment and housing was the status quo.

Afraid of the Dark

Trapped by her own insecurities, Kahlua cannot relate to the person in the mirror. She believes that if she doesn't acknowledge her thick hair, big lips, and dark skin maybe, just maybe, she'll be able to blend in. Hiding in the back of the class, she writes, passionately expressing and releasing emotions about identity, home, community, culture, and forgiveness. All Kahlua wants is freedom, whatever that really means.

Winds of Change

From working in the steel plant and as a sleeping car porter to being awarded the Order of Canada and appointed to the Senate of Canada, Calvin Ruck worked diligently to ensure that his children, and his children’s children, wouldn’t have to go through the same things he went through. His efforts were the beginning of a major movement for Black employment in the Nova Scotian community. Through his tireless efforts and dedication, he initiated a significant social transformation in Nova Scotia.

Save the World for Me

Maxine Tynes's third book addresses children and adults with heartfelt concerns and her exhilarating insight into the workings of the world. In 1988, Maxine was named the Milton Acorn People's Poet of Canada for her lively and intense writing.

Still Fighting for Change

In their own words, the twenty authors create a conversation with the reader about the Black social workers in Canada who have struggled to bring change not for themselves, but for their communities. Included are stories of foster care, adoption, immigration, disability, poverty and how social workers deal with the everyday racism in education and in their practice. These writers invite readers to think critically about their experiences, their journeys and the lessons learned along the way.

Expect the Unexpected

This is a highly charged first collection of spoken word poetry based on the lives of inner city youth. It's deep, raw, uncut, and unflinching in telling their stories. Each poem will take you into the inner life of young people trying to survive in a hostile world. Here are poems created to break barriers, stigmas, and stereotypes that keep us all stuck in darkness, poems to open hearts and minds.

Lush Dreams, Blue Exile

These poems range from a personal evocation of Black Nova Scotian history to an intense, intimate response to world events in the last thirty years. All are “fugitive poems” evolving from 1979 to 1991.

Music in the Dark

This is a compelling novel set in Prohibition-era Montreal when alcohol, drugs and jazz music ruled “Sin City.” Taylor Williams is a young black musician struggling to find fame in the Montreal Harlem District amid gangsters, racism and bootleggers. As a young boy, Taylor escaped a terrifying ordeal that haunts him as he pursues his dream of becoming a famous jazz musician.

The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery

After Africville was bulldozed in the 1960s under the guise of “urban renewal,” Eddie Carvery returned to the site of his former hometown and pitched a tent in protest. Forty years, three families, seven heart attacks and numerous attempts on his life later, he remains living on the land where he was born. He’s been shot at, had his residence set on fire and been run off his land countless times. He’s rebuilt himself and never given up his dream of Africville.

Shadowboxing

George Dixon was the finest boxer of his generation and arguably among the finest boxers ever. His accomplishments in the ring were extraordinary: the first Black boxing champion, the first Canadian boxing champion, the first boxing champion of multiple weight classes, and the first boxing champion to lose to regain his title. He defended his title more than any other champion - then or since - and he reportedly fought in an unprecedented 800 bouts.

Pulling No Punches: The Sam Langford Story

Sam Langford was so good that many boxers refused to fight him, so good that he took bouts with bigger men just to get a match, so good that he once fought the greatest boxer of his age, Jack Johnson, who was forty pounds heavier and a good foot taller—and still went the distance. From his first bout in 1902 until his last a quarter century later, he battled boxing’s colour barrier that kept him from being world champion in three different weight classes.

Redemption Songs

This book tells the extraordinary story of how one of Bob Marley's greatest songs was born in Nova Scotia. It opens with Marley's live acoustic performance of Redemption Song at the end of his life, and reveals that the core lyric comes from a speech Marcus Garvey delivered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1937. The author explores why Marley so revered Garvey, and, in doing so, looks at the roots of Rastafarianism and ideas about race.

SUMMER READS

Redemption Songs

This book tells the extraordinary story of how one of Bob Marley's greatest songs was born in Nova Scotia. It opens with Marley's live acoustic performance of Redemption Song at the end of his life, and reveals that the core lyric comes from a speech Marcus Garvey delivered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1937. The author explores why Marley so revered Garvey, and, in doing so, looks at the roots of Rastafarianism and ideas about race.

Coastal Lives

This is a love story – a tale of two coasts, east and west, two writers, Marjorie Simmins and Silver Donald Cameron, and many definitions of home. It took 800 e-mails, countless phone calls and three PFO letters, but in the end, she, age 37, agreed to start seeing him, age 59.
This is a tale of love and resistance written with humour and candour. Simmins writes of overwhelming happiness and flattening grief, all against the backdrop of an East Coast Canadian world so new to her.

Louisbourg or Bust

A rickety surf rig on wheels. A guide named Don Quixote. No cellphone. This 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.

Driving Minnie's Piano

Lesley Choyce writes of his love for the rugged coast and tells tales of the ordinary and the extraordinary. His story includes accounts of what it’s like surfing in the Canadian North Atlantic through all four seasons including the frigid depths of winter.
Also threading its way through this narrative is the story of Minnie’s piano. There is music here in word and spirit along with the lessons learned from the old and the young.

The Legend of Gladee's Canteen_ Down Hom

Gladee's Canteen, several times voted as one of the ten best restaurants in Canada, was a special example of co-operative and communal spirit. At the centre of the operation were Gladee and her sister Flossie, supported by the extended Hirtle family.
The book draws on the author's family associations, personal memory, and the outlying stockpile of collective recollections — a tapestry of events woven through the evolutionary fabric of a small, relatively isolated Maritime coastal community.

While Crossing the Field

This is Deborah Banks’s debut book of poetry. Her poems take us out onto the land where experiences in the natural world are filtered through the internal landscape of longing, presence, gratitude, and attentiveness. From the lowly spider to the vast expanse of the Atlantic below her house, the poet invites us to consider who we are when everything in our bustling world is removed and we are left with the greatest expanse of all: the Now and how it can inform our every breath.

The Smeltdog Man

This is the story of how a Cape Bretoner marshalled his accidental invention, a marijuana-induced, munchie-inspired Smeltdog, into the most successful fast food franchise in Canada. As president of his newly formed Good Karma Corporation, he tells the tale of how his business empire grows beyond his control, turning him into a billionaire.

Green Ghost, Blue Ocean: No Fixed Address

This is a travel memoir about a 40,000 nautical mile adventure that spans seventeen years. When Jennifer and her husband Nik begin to imagine a life outside the norm, they seize on the idea of long-distance sailing as the perfect way to journey down a road less travelled. It is a story about the importance of starting and the acceptance of an imperfect plan. This is a tale of the triumph of conviction: if you believe that you'll figure it out when you get there, it's amazing how far you can go.

Lucy Cloud

In 1960s Inverness, Cape Breton, the coal mines have closed and family farms stand abandoned as families must find other ways to survive. Curly MacLeod, the last of the old-time horse traders, must cultivate a new clientele to support his wife Annabel and their adopted son Blaise.
Central to story is Lucy, a shy and altruistic girl. Lucy’s life is is full of the strange and the wonderful. With her mystic skill, where will her true calling take her?

Around the Province

Early on a May morning, a young woman straps on a small 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. She billets with locals each night and meets countless Nova Scotians who come out to walk with her, support her project, and tell her stories.

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. Landry’s own gratitude practice was shaken to its core when both her mother and a close friend died within weeks of one another while she was writing Silver Linings.

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.

Limerence

Can a man have both the warmth of a solid family and the challenges of a fruitful career? This question lies at the heart of this fun novel exploring the lives of two people seeking very different ways to be men.
One’s a stay-at-home dad, the other a freewheeling libertine. Both struggle with addictions to limerence, that Leonard Cohen longing for something new that drives so many men to leave behind what’s good in pursuit of what seems better.

IN THE NEWS

August 15, 2020: Janice Landry wins the Gold Award for Non-Fiction in The Miramichi Reader's "The Very Best!" Book Awards, for her book Silver Linings.
August 10, 2020: Finding a forgotten Halifax: an article on Steven Laffoley's new book, "Mean Streets."
July 8, 2020: Announcing the winners of the Third Annual Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction!
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

August 23, 1:00 to 3:00 - Carole Langille will be at LaHave River Books for a book signing event about her latest book, Doing Time: Writing Workshops in Prison.

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Redemption Songs

This book tells the extraordinary story of how one of Bob Marley's greatest songs was born in Nova Scotia. It opens with Marley's live acoustic performance of Redemption Song at the end of his life, and reveals that the core lyric comes from a speech Marcus Garvey delivered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1937. The author explores why Marley so revered Garvey, and, in doing so, looks at the roots of Rastafarianism and ideas about race.