Room at the Heart of Things: The Work that Came to Me

A lively, quirky collection of short stories, poetry, and memoir vignettes from published [Nino Ricci, Robyn Sarah, Rhea Tregebov] and unpublished writers Harvor has met over the years in workshops and as a writer-in-residence in universities and libraries across Canada. Work that has nerve and verve and is close to the bone: this is what I’ve looked for during the years I’ve been a workshop leader and writer-in-residence. So that when I made copies of poems or stories that I loved, it was always because the work lived and breathed, or because it was, in an original and off-the-cuff way, thoughtful or profound. Which is how these stories and poems became [along with some memoir pieces] the ‘work that came to me.’ I didn’t have to solicit or select or reject, I was already a collector. And so it gives me great pleasure to invite others to read this collection of writers who I feel will matter in the future because their work already has such force and élan. — Elisabeth Harvor