Publisher's Synopsis
In honour of the twentieth anniversary of the Literary Journalism Program at the Banff Centre, Cabin Fever celebrates two decades of writing with thirteen of the finest creative non-fiction pieces written by program participants. Drawn primarily from the program's second decade, this anthology includes essays on a strikingly original and global range of topics by some of the best non-fiction writers in the country: Tara Grescoe goes in search of "pure" absinthe; Jeff Warren examines the way whales think; Megan Williams takes driving lessons in Rome; Bill Reynolds writes about the joys and dangers of riding a bicycle; Charlotte Gill gives us the dirt on her eighteen years as a tree planter; John Vigna confronts his relationship with a troubled brother; Margaret Webb takes a sexy road trip to find oysters; Jaspreet Singh ruminates on life in Kashmir in the age of plutonium; Jeremy Klaszus gets to know his grandfather, a Nazi resister who is obsessed with Google Maps; Deborah Ostrovsky explores bilingualism and the "grammar of relationships" after she marries into a Quebecois family; Jonathan Garfinkel goes to Israel to find a house occupied by an Arab and a Jew; Penney Kome writes about a family friend in Chicago who helped invent the atomic bomb; and Andrew Westoll gives up love in order to hunt for a rare blue frog in Surinam. Unique, engaging, and enriching, Cabin Fever is a testament to the literary talents of each individual contributor and a tribute to the longevity and excellence of Banff Centre's Literary Journalism program over the past twenty years.
