2008: Bruce Serafin, Stardust

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Description

The teenage Serafin is a captivating figure, freshly arrived from the United States and eager to immerse himself in the particular delights of a still largely frontier-era Vancouver. As a young man enrolled at SFU, he refuses the perm pressed upon him in a Chinatown barber shop and eavesdrops on his rowdy neighbours in a Powell Street apartment house. Working in the post office, Serafin discovers Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant and realizes for the first time that writing about working-class people is not only possible, but desirable.

Later, Serafin embarks upon an intimate criticism of touchstones of Western culture. Roland Barthes and Daniel Defoe are counterparts, he suggests, and shows why. Leonard Cohen was read so avidly by the young proto-hippies of the era not because of his writing, but because he physically modelled a way to be cool. The ceremonial objects collected by anthropologists, according to Serafin, are not actually art but something else again. Serafin critiques literary magazines and western novels. He discusses the work of Don DeLillo, Terry Glavin, Steve McCaffery, Northrop Frye, and William Henry Drummond. There's an engagement to these essays that lightly sketches the workings of a mind forever learning.

Judges' Comments

“This eclectic collection of essays, ranging from the literary to the personal to the contemplative, never ceases to inform with the understated rhetoric of a natural teacher and astute observer,” said Laurier English professor Dr. Tanis MacDonald, a member of the judging panel which also included well-known members of Canada’s literary community Russell Smith and Arlene Perly Rae. “Serafin’s narrative voice has the quiet confidence and an analytical acumen of someone who respects the effort of writing and the value of storytelling.”

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• Publisher: New Star Books

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.