Cynthia Flood

Cynthia Flood (born September 17, 1940 in Toronto ) is a Canadian writer who has preferably written short stories and has also written a novel . In 1990 she won the Journey Prize for one of her short stories .

Life

Cynthia Flood was born in 1940 as the daughter of the novelist Luella Bruce Creighton (1901–1996) and the historian Donald Creighton (1902–1979) in England and came to Toronto when she was two years old , where she grew up.

After studying at the University of Toronto , she spent several years in the United States , including New York , then Toronto and Montreal . In 1969 she moved to Vancouver , British Columbia .

Over the years she has been active in various socialist , feminist , pacifist and environmentalist civil movement groups, even during her time as an English teacher at Langara College. In the mid-1980s, she published three First Nation textbooks . She has also taught creative writing in the Simon Fraser University Writing & Publishing Program.

Cynthia Flood's short story collections include The Animals In Their Elements (Talonbooks, 1987) and My Father Took A Cake To France (Talonbooks, 1992). The title story of the same name from the last publication won the Journey Prize in 1990 . The Journey Prize is a Canadian literary prize that has existed since 1989 and is awarded annually by the publishing house McClelland and Stewart , Toronto, and the Writers' Trust of Canada for the best short story by an aspiring writer published in a Canadian literary magazine. In general, her short stories were subsequently published in various literary magazines , such as The New Quarterly , CNQ, Event , Grain , and anthologies of North America. So three of them appeared in Best Canadian Stories .

Flood published her first novel Making A Stone of the Heart (Key Porter, 2002).

The last short story collection Floods, The English Stories , brought out her publisher in April 2009. Globe and Mail reviewer Lynda Grace Philippsen described it as a “perfect summer reading. Without being light or trite it can be picked up and put down with ease, and the characters linger with the reader long after. "-" perfect reading for the summer. Without being too light or shallow, it can be taken up and ended again without difficulty, and the characters are close to the reader for a long time. ”The short stories contained therein are set in England in the 1950s in a small hotel for permanent guests and at a girls' school. One of the short stories, Religious Knowledge , won the National Magazine Gold Award in 2000 after being published in PRISM International magazine. Another story, Learning To Dance , was selected for Best Canadian Stories 2008 by editor John Metcalf .

In September 2013 she published a collection of short stories called Red Girl Rat Boy and continues to be politically active.

plant

as editor

• Composition and native Indian literature I: ENGL 102. Open Learning Institute, Richmond, British Columbia 1984. 2nd edition 1986.
• Composition and native Indian literature II: ENGL 103. Open Learning Institute, Richmond, British Columbia 1985.
• Through native eyes.  : Open Learning Institute, Richmond, British Columbia 1985.

Short stories

• The animals in their elements. Talonbooks, Vancouver 1987, ISBN 0-88922-249-5 .
• My father took a cake to France. Talonbooks, Vancouver 1992, ISBN 0-88922-310-6 .
• The English Stories. Biblioasis, Emeryville, Ontario 2009, ISBN 978-1-897231-56-2 .
• Red Girl Rat Boy. Biblioasis, Emeryville, Ontario 2009, ISBN 978-1-927428-41-2 .

Novels

• Making a stone of the heart. Key Porter, Toronto 2002, ISBN 1-55263-452-3 .

Reviews

The English Stories

“Flood artfully transplants the conventions of the Canadian Gothic story form and its obsession with death, isolation, madness, and natural landscape into the static, provincial milieu of the genteel British lower-middle classes enshrined in the works of VS Pritchett. (...) Taken together, the stories ultimately achieve a brooding resonance that captures the literal and spiritual dampness of a provincial scene that all but died out with the last remnants of the British empire. "

“Flood artfully translates the conventions of Canadian Gothic history and his passion for death, isolation, madness and landscape into the static, provincial milieu of the pleasant British middle class as described in the works of VS Pritchett. [...] Taken together, the stories combine a seething resonance that captures the literary and spiritual dullness of the provincial scene that had died out with the fall of the British Empire. "

- James Grainger: Quill & Quire .

“Vancouver writer Cynthia Flood has won a slew of prices for her fiction, and her latest book, a collection of linked short stories called The English Stories, shows why the accolades are so well deserved. Flood is a thoughtful writer whose richly dense prose opens up worlds to explore. "

“Writer Cynthia Flood has won a handful of awards for her stories, and her latest work, a collection of interconnected short stories called The English Stories, shows why those awards were well deserved. Flood is an imaginative writer whose highly condensed prose gives us a world to discover. "

- Candace Fertile: Vancouver Sun .

The Animals in Their Elements

"Women writers, most of them experts at subtexts and subversion, need language that speaks their own truth. In these 15 stories, Flood's varied and occasionally experimental narrative techniques give her scope to reveal her concerns without being didactic (...) A distinctive voice is already audible in the best of these stories. "

“Female writers, most of them experts in subtext and subversion, need a language that speaks its own truth. In these 15 stories Flood varies her experimental narrative techniques without having a didactic effect. (...). A clear voice can be heard in the best of these stories. "

- Patricia Maika: Vancouver Sun.

Making a Stone of the Heart

"In Making a Stone of the Heart, author Cynthia Flood's characters don't just breathe, they bristle with life."

"In Making a Stone of the Heart, the characters Cynthia Floods not only breathe, they are literally bursting with life."

- Linda L. Richards, Januarymagazine

“With Making a Stone of the Heart, (…) Cynthia Flood (…) delivers a lyrically challenging and stylistically dazzling first novel that nevertheless miscarries (albeit spectacularly) in that increasingly barren sub-genre of literary fiction aiming to sell its wares to the upwardly futile among the malltitudes. (...) No doubt, Flood, having broken into the genre, will handily break out of the shackles of contemporary anti-fiction to write the novel her gifts demand. ”

Awards and nominations

• 1990: Journey Prize for My father took a cake to France
• 1994: Western Magazines Gold Award , Fiction, for Country Life in Event
• 1999: Second Prize, Prism International Short Fiction contest, for Religious Knowledge
• 2000: National Magazine Gold Award for Religious Knowledge
• 2002: Shortlist , City of Vancouver Book Prize for Making A Stone Of The Heart

Web links

• Literature by and about Cynthia Flood in the catalog of the German National Library
• www.cynthiaflood.com . Accessed July 18, 2012.
• Cynthia Flood: Blue Clouds . In: Numéro Cinq. January 30, 2012. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
• Publisher profile Cynthia Flood. on: www.biblioasis.com. Accessed July 18, 2012.
• Literary lectures by Cynthia Flood at Simon Fraser University . Accessed July 18, 2012.
• Seriously Taken. Collective review by Kathryn Carter (including The English Stories ) . In: Canadian Literature. Vol. 208, spring 2011, pp. 141-143.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Literary estate of Luella Bruce Creighton. University of Waterloo Library . Newsletter. May 1, 1998. Accessed July 19, 2012.
2. ↑ List of estates (PDF; 92 kB)
3. ↑ Biographies of Prominent Quebec and Canadian Historical Figures: Donald Grant Creighton (1902–1979). On: faculty.marianopolis.edu. Marianopolis College, Canada. Accessed July 19, 2012.
4. ↑ Donald Creighton. Portrait of the historian as an artist. In: Edge Magazine. University of Toronto . Accessed July 19, 2012.
5. ^ M. Brook Taylor: Donald Creighton ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved July 28, 2019.
6. ↑ cynthiaflood.com ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Cynthia Flood, Contributor. ( Memento of the original from February 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Banff Center Press. 
8. ↑ writerstrust.com
9. ↑ Example: Cynthia Flood: Review On Non-Fiction - Don Gayton - Man Facing West (Thistledown Press, 2010) & Anne Sorbie - Memoir of a Good Death: A Novel (Thistledown Press, 2010). In: EVENT Magazine (PDF; 147 kB). Issue 40-2. Accessed July 19, 2012.
10. ↑ oberonpress. Approx
11. ↑ In a class of her own. ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Globe and Mail . June 12, 2009. Accessed July 18, 2012.  
12. ↑ foundpress.com  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ James Grainger: Collective review of: Terry Griggs : Thought You Were Dead & Cynthia Flood: The English Stories. In: Quill & Quire . January 2009. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
14. ↑ Quoted from biblioasis archive . June 2006. Accessed July 18, 2012.
15. ↑ Quoted from: cynthiaflood.com ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
16. ↑ januarymagazine.com
17. ^ Judith Fitzgerald: Featured Book Review: Making a Stone of the Heart by Cynthia Flood.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: www.monstersandcritics.com. February 28, 2008. Accessed July 19, 2012.  
18. ↑ cynthiaflood.com ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.