BETH POWNING

Beth Powning’s first book, Home: Chronicle of a North Country Life (published in Canada as Seeds of Another Summer), was praised by the Chicago Tribune as “a wandering serenity you can hold in your hand. . . . In a world increasingly cynical and numb, Powning puts a light in the window for us all.” Her second book, the memoir Shadow Child: an Apprenticeship in Love and Loss, was shortlisted for the 2000 Edna Staebler Award and was praised by Library Journal as “superbly written” and by the Telegraph Journal as “uplifting.” Beth Powning is also a contributor to the anthology When the Wild Comes Leaping Up: Personal Encounters with Nature, edited by David Suzuki (Greystone, 2000). Her first novel, The Hatbox Letters, was a Canadian bestseller and “a stunning debut” (The Globe and Mail). Her latest novel, The Sea Captain’s Wife (Knopf Canada, January 2010), was hailed by The Globe and Mail as “the work of an extraordinary writer,” by the Edmonton Journal as “a marvellous read,” by the Ottawa Citizen as “not to be missed,” and by the Owen Sound Sun Times as “the best book of 2010 … a brilliant, absorbing story.”

Beth Powning was born in Putnam, Connecticut, and received her B.A from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied Creative Writing under E. L. Doctorow. Her short fiction has been published in Quarry, Prism International, Wascana Review, Tamarack Review, Fiddlehead, Canadian Fiction Magazine, and The Antigonish Review and broadcast on CBC’s Anthology, Audio Stage, and Atlantic Airwaves. She lives on a 300-acre farm near Sussex, New Brunswick, with her husband, the sculptor Peter Powning.

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Jackie Kaiser
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-Owen Sound Sun Times

“For travellers, virtual and actual, The Sea Captain’s Wife offers a fine and variegated journey: back in time (to the 1860s) and around the world on a merchant sailing ship. . . . Beth Powning is an extraordinary writer. . . . Her people are as real as personal friends, neighbours or compelling strangers. The watchful, visually engaged girl-child, Carrie, is, through both descriptive power and economy of prose, one of the most deeply affecting characters I’ve encountered. Language choices are always the most alive and apposite. The writing rings true to the period without ever sounding like a device. . . . For all its originality of voice, The Sea Captain’s Wife does evoke other books, most notably Bharatee Mukherjee’s superlative The Holder of the World. Azuba, with her gutsy, sea-seeking spirit, reminded me of Tarl Prackett in Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s Greenstone. Her deepening knowledge of seafarers’ medicines crosscuts with M.F.K. Fisher’s A Cordial Water. The book is clearly thoroughly researched, yet never reads as written research but as lives fully and panoramically lived. It reads as real. I am a witness to its truth and sweep. I read, and was there.”
-The Globe and Mail

“Readers will find a streak of the poetic in all of Beth Powning’s work, including her new novel, The Sea Captain’s Wife. As in her two wonderfully wrought memoirs, Edge Seasons and Shadow Child and in her widely lauded first novel, The Hatbox Letters, the New Brunswick writer proves a master of descriptive dexterity. Her keen eye for landscape and for detail give her work a rewarding resonance. . . . Powning’s impressive prose, her skill at setting a scene, her rare descriptive power override the odd formulaic turn. . . . Lively, well-researched . . . . The Sea Captain’s Wife is a terrific tale, fast-moving and expertly told, one which measures, in the author’s phrase, ‘the true size of the world.’ Like The Hatbox Letters, Powning’s second cleverly crafted novel is not to be missed.”
-Ottawa Citizen

"[A] romantic, historical tale [that] pits a determined seafaring heroine against local anti-feminist, landlubbing naysayers. ... [Powning] uses a surging scandal to embark on the high and treacherous seas with this powerful tale of love and obsession."
-Elle

“A brilliant and absorbing story. . . . An ambitious historical novel rich in adventure.”
-Telegraph-Journal

 “The Sea Captain’s Wife [gets] off to a dramatic and engrossing start, and the pace rarely flags. . . . During the two years Azuba spends circumnavigating the globe with her family, her relationship with Nathaniel changes in ways she never could have imagined. The journey provides Powning a natural framework on which to hang Azuba’s growth, not to mention the opportunity to show what life was like on a late 19th-century cargo ship. Powning has a terrific eye for detail, and her dramatic scenes read like a treatment from an action movie. Equal parts character study, travelogue, and action-adventure tale, The Sea Captain’s Wife is a marvellous read.”
-Edmonton Journal

“Beth Powning lets her imagination run away from her in The Sea Captain's Wife. This turns out to be just fine, as we lucky readers get to go along for the voyage. It's highbrow Harlequin meets high-seas adventure. Powning gussies up both forms: Rather than typical "boy-meet girl" romance, her love story anatomizes a struggling young marriage; rather than a salty sailor, this ocean epic recounts the escapades of a sea-faring wife. … Powning's craft elevates this novel above pure genre. … Ultimately this is a novel about relationships, the changes wrought by time and the long, rocky voyage that constitutes marriage.  … The Sea Captain's Wife is one of those rare works that reconciles and satisfies both aspects of the female soul -- the quest for adventure and the desire for beauty and love.”
-The Toronto Star

“The Sea Captain’s Wife reveals Powning to be intuitive and reflective, yet self-assured in her mastery of the art of nature writing. She skillfully weaves both a harrowing and touching story about marriage, obligation, and devotion.”
-Winnipeg Free Press

“An elegant piece of writing. . . . It is swashbuckling, it is heart-rending and readers will shed tears. . . . Powning has opened up a fascinating bit of history.”
-National Post

“Few writers so stress the ties that bind a life lived to the place where it’s lived; Powning’s central artistic concern, both as photographer and writer, has always been to locate herself—and her characters—along the great chain of being.”
-Maclean’s

 “In history and in literature, the sea has always been the realm of men, but Beth Powning reminds us that women were there, too. The Sea Captain’s Wife is both a brilliant and absorbing story of a singular woman’s courageous entry into this alien world and of her growing sense of self-knowledge and strength as she encounters its demands. It is a tale of adventure and adversity, and of the terrors and deep satisfactions of life on the ever-dangerous and unpredictable sea.”
-Derek Lundy, author of Godforsaken Sea and The Way of a Ship

“Affecting and engaging. . . . Powning’s lyrical prose accentuates the struggles of the characters while smoothly advancing the plot. The descriptive passages paint a clear picture of the historical period while taking care not to wallow in gratuitous details.” 
-Quill & Quire

 “Beth Powning has the gift of drawing her readers into a work. The characters in The Sea Captain’s Wife are enduringly memorable. Set in the 1800s, Powning paints scenes of sea life and its pains, fears, wonders, joys and tragedies.”
-The Coast (Halifax)

“I can‘t help but mention, as well, Powning’s literary artistry in The Sea Captain’s Wife. Words roll effortlessly off the page into the reader’s mind, combining into the rich sensory landscape Azuba inhabits. Powning‘s use of simple sentences, loaded with carefully placed sense imagery, creates a world beyond the matter-of-fact sense of the narrative. It’s impressive writing.”
-Peter Smith, Telegraph-Journal

“Epic in its emotional intensity. . . . The work also succeeds at painting a vivid and vibrant portrait of the Atlantic Canadian landscape during the last days of the age of sail.”
-The Chronicle Herald (interview)

“Azuba is an intelligent and resourceful heroine whose narrative voice carries Powning’s latest book. . . . Infused with rich period detail, right down to the bone buttons that adorn their hand-sewn clothes, the Age of Sail is alive and of real local import in Powning’s looking glass. . . . Powning is at her best in describing the details of the dynamic spectrum of human emotion. . . . Powning’s book is a beautiful piece of historical fiction.”
-Telegraph-Journal

Praise for EDGE SEASONS: A MEMOIR by Beth Powning
A Canadian Living magazine Book Club Selection

A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2005

“There are few writers who can evoke the wild world with such intensity and originality. Again and again, I was moved to silence by her words.”
-The Globe and Mail

“This is a quiet, intense book. . . . Each sentence rewarded me with fresh insight”
-Patrick Lane, The Globe and Mail

“For those already familiar with New Brunswick literary writer Beth Powning’s work, the release of Edge Seasons, an elegiac and beautifully written memoir, is good news indeed. The wonder, of course, is that she hasn’t already been mentioned in the same breath as writers such as Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields. . . . Powning is always attuned to the sights and sounds around her. . . . Edge Seasons engages the reader from the first page. It is a joyful, lyrical celebration of life and of the Earth we inhabit, always grounded in the here and now. . . . An effortless read that makes us look anew at life, and the promise of each day that we are given. It is, quite simply, a wonderful book.”
-Winnipeg Free Press

“[Powning] expresses more beautifully than any recent writer what it means to put your creative passion on hold while raising a family. . . . Powning establishes herself as a gifted nature writer. And yet what will remain with most readers, no doubt, is Powning’s ability to capture the essence of parenting.”
-Edmonton Journal (also appeared in Ottawa Citizen)

“Powning . . . gives a beautiful and attentive description of the outdoors. Nature’s subtle and delicate changes are well-expressed––each season leads gently into the next, while remaining completely different from it. . . . Interpersonal relationships are Powning’s strong suit. . . Beth’s shock and pride as she watches her son mature is sensitively described. . . Powning watches this process as if from afar, but with the warmth of a mother’s eyes. . . . Edge Seasons is a perceptive, well-written account of one of life’s turning points.”
-The Gazette 

“Edge Seasons . . . is an apt title for Powning’s beautifully distilled memoir, a haunting evocation of the passing of time and of the rewards and regrets it trails in its wake. . . . Rather than a lament, Powning’s book is a celebration. . . . Powning finds much to praise in the natural world to which she is so attuned. She writes beautifully of animals and birds. . . . Edge Seasons is a treasure.”
-London Free Press 

“Eloquent.”
- The Citizen

“Beth Powning’s Edge Seasons is a powerful memoir. . . . As a writer who pays attention to the exquisite detail of the natural world, she points the reader’s attention to the beauty and decay around her homestead through the masterful use of evocative language and description . . . . Powning demonstrates solid footing and a clear voice . . . a unique voice, all her own.”
-The New Brunswick Reader

“A powerful memoir. . . . Masterful use of evocative language.”
-Telegraph-Journal

“A moving and compelling book.”
-The Daily Gleaner

Praise for THE HATBOX LETTERS by Beth Powning
Longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
National Bestseller
A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2004
Shortlisted for the Words Worthy Award
A Book Sense Notable Book for April 2005
Shortlisted for the 2005 Atlantic Booksellers Choice Award

“Beth Powning’s novel The Hatbox Letters succeeds on two levels. Stylistically, it is beautifully written––one of those rare books where the artistry is evident line-by-line, but where the prose never comes across as overstated or showy. On the contrary, the words ‘perfectly judged‘ sum up Ms Powning’s mastery of language. At the same time, she also tells a terrific story, and one which delves into that most complex of human realizations––the discovery that the secure edifice of family life is, in fact, built on sand. As Kate Harding unearths––amidst her own new-found widowhood––some desperate truths about the world of her parents (and the fact that their apparently ideal marriage was, in fact, a series of falsehoods), we’re also forced to reflect about how we rarely know those closest to us . . . and, as such, really never understand the forces that shaped us.

“If I was a betting man, I’d wager good money that The Hatbox Letters will be one of those great crossover novels that will garner serious critical attention and a very wide readership.”
-Douglas Kennedy

“Powning brilliantly illuminates grief in all its shape-shifting pain, and in so doing, expands her characters’ lives, and ours. . . . Powning has crafted a deeply moving book, one planted in the natural world, abundant in imagery that firmly roots Kate and the reader in the fecund cycle of life. A novel about death that makes you joyously glad you are alive, The Hatbox Letters is both elegy and song of joy. . . . It is an extraordinary achievement. . . . [A] stunning debut.”
-The Globe and Mail

“The Hatbox Letters is a thoughtful, meditative story about accepting the loss that life sends our way, so that we can appreciate the joy.”
-Toronto Star

“In this muted, measured debut, Powning captures the sorrow of a grieving widow as she revisits the past to heal present-day wounds. . . . Powning does an excellent job of portraying Kate’s sadness, divulging the tales of her family and focusing on the quiet beauty of her surroundings.”
-Publishers Weekly

“The imagery is evocative and clear, and the feelings of love and loss are transmitted effectively and elegantly. The Hatbox Letters conveys a sense of wonder and wisdom.”
-The Vancouver Sun

“Powning is a superior writer, with startling powers of description. . . . [Her] descriptions of gardens and birds rival any Audubon painting. The Hatbox Letters is not only an absorbing literary experiences, but an exquisite visual experience as well.”
-The Gazette

“A slowly unraveling tale about a widow’s way of rejoining the world. . . . Powning has a delicate and lyrical touch.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Tender and lush. . . . Powning writes about grief with uncanny precision; she gets all its ambushes and piercing aches exactly right. She shows how grief can become more acute with the passing of time, rather than less painful as one might expect, and how its constricting grip can slowly paralyze the person left behind. . . . Exquisite writing . . . Powning’s prose is full of unbridled energy, dialogue, action and life. . . . Powning’s writing reminds me of Susan Minot’s Folly or Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart because it is rich, atmospheric, textured and swift.”
Lisa Moore, National Post

“The writing is highly sensual, painterly even, vividly portraying the natural world and its changing seasons. . . . Powning’s subject here is no less than the relationship of life and death, and she engages it with rigour and grace.”

Quill & Quire

“[A] novel of stunning beauty . . . The Hatbox Letters is a moving elegy to things lost and found.”
The New Brunswick Reader

“Powning’s exquisite novel sings. . . . As brilliant as the light toward which it reaches.”
The Chronicle Herald

“Beth Powning reminds us of the essential links and threads that bind family and loved ones, past generations to future. In gentle prose, she illuminates passages through grief, yet the novel is studded with vitality. A story of unexpected endings and new beginnings––of life surging forward.”
Frances Itani, author of Deafening

“Beth Powning’s language is lush with stunning images that linger long after the reading experience––and with soothing insights, especially that of the healing potency available in family histories and connections with friends. She takes us by the hand and leads us through the landmines of grief. We can trust her: she knows the way back to the safety of emerging hope and belief in renewal.”
Marjorie Anderson, co-editor, Dropped Threads

“Like Annie Dillard, Beth Powning is a keen observer of the natural world. In language both erotic and exact, she explores the conflicting emotions of love and loss in a novel redolent with memory and the truth of experience, hard won.”
Joan Clark

“A fabulous character study.”

The Midwest Book Review

“Powning’s writing is lyrical . . . the author poignantly and creatively draws parallels between Giles’ trials and Kate’s tragic loss and ability to rediscover life on her own.”

Romantic Times (four stars)

Praise for HOME: CHRONICLE OF A NORTH COUNTRY LIFE by Beth Powning

(published in Canada as Seeds of Another Summer: Finding the Spirit of Home in Nature)

A Discovery Title of the New England Booksellers Association

Shortlisted for the Calvin Rutstrum Foundation’s 2000 Rutstrum Author’s Award

“Powning combines an extraordinary understanding and sense of place with an affinity for the world of nature. . . . This book imparts a feeling of serenity; Annie Dillard fans will enjoy it.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A wandering serenity you can hold in your hand . . . with beautiful prose and evocative photography, [this book] pours out small wonders, hard-won truths and a desire to connect with nature. . . . In a world increasingly cynical and numb, Powning puts a light in the window for us all, wherever we call home.”
Chicago Tribune

“Beth Powning’s beautiful celebration of natural life is meet and proper for these unnatural times. I think it will be read for years to come.”
E. L. Doctorow

“Powning’s Home is one of the most beautifully executed books to come our way in a long time . . . rings with joy.”
Orion

“Powning takes her camera, her pen and, most important, her spirit into the landscape. . . . The delicate, often beautiful photographs combine with a quietly spirited naturalistic prose in an Annie Dillard–Henry David Thoreau mode to produce a work evocative in both sensual and domestic ways.”
Martin Levin, The Globe and Mail

“An eloquent celebration of the rural lifestyle and a joy to experience; the author proves herself as fully adept with photography as she is with writing.”
Bloomsbury Review

“Powning[’s] choice of language and the rhythm of her prose wondrously evoke the idea of living within a natural setting so violently wild and indifferent to human intention.”
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

“An elegant account of the author’s move to a New Brunswick farm. . . . Each paragraph is a gem.”
Buffalo News

“A true marriage of words and photographs. . . . Beth’s sense of home is not of a static dwelling, but of a place of seasons, cycles, and lifespans, or experiences and memories. . . . This is a book for your soul.”
Freeman Patterson, Telegraph-Journal

“Powning supplements her lyrical photos of the details of nature’s beauties with equally lyrical passages about the spiritual succor she finds on the boundaries between the natural and the human.”  
The Vancouver Sun

“One of the most beautiful books imaginable.”                                                                     
The Guardian (Charlottetown)

“As with any good story, Powning’s photographs telegraph tension, between fragile and strong; background and foreground; before the storm and after. . . . And those are just the photographs. Reading her text is like taking a walk through a sun-splotched forest; we hear and smell and feel all the things that are ’missing’ from the photos.”
The Daily News (Halifax)

“Powning’s eye is keen and curious. Nothing escapes her. . . . A powerful statement that makes us sit up and wonder what we’ve been missing.”                      

The Windsor Star

“[Powning’s] strong poetic writing weaves images and insight into a tapestry of bewitching presence. . . . Economy of phrase and deliberate understatement etch details in the reader’s mind in a way that no overblown passages ever could achieve.”            

The Burlington Spectator

“Beth Powning’s sensuous photographs and pure, powerful prose lure us into their embrace, laying bare our desire for a union with the natural world. This is the work of a gifted artist.”
Courtney Milne, Sacred Places in North America

 “Powerful. . . . Powning stays pure to her vision of nature.”
USA Today

 “Beautifully detailed . . . substantial . . . can turn the heads of hard-core urbanites.”
Edmonton Journal

“Delightful!”
Newark Star

Praise for Shadow Child: AN APPRENTICESHIP IN LOVE AND LOSS by Beth Powning

National Bestseller

Shortlisted for the 2000 Edna Staebler Award

“[Powning] tells the story with incantatory grace . . . with an anguish that is rattling . . . life, captured here in all its keenness.”              
Kirkus Reviews

“A rare, lyrical candour . . . direct and wise. . . . I loved this book for showing the complexities of a lasting marriage, the rocky struggle of rural motherhood, and for the surprise Powning discovers––that mothers, in giving birth, or in giving stillbirth, also give birth to themselves.”
Molly Peacock

“With honesty and gut-wrenching insight, Beth Powning writes her story of personal loss within the context of the changing earth, the sky, the natural world of which we are all a part. Lush with detail, the book is about love, recognition and release, the creative spirit within us. A moving and courageous work.”
Frances Itani

“Superbly written. . . . Powning skillfully chronicles her personal metamorphosis as she learns to accept herself and penetrates the complexities of relationships in family and community.”
Library Journal

“Eloquent . . .  an unflinching eye for detail. . . . Powning’s language is both taut and lyrical. . . . Shadow Child is about more than a tragic personal loss; it manages somehow to be about all losses, the painful and inevitable letting go that makes us human . . . her writing will resonate in its own way for each of us—stirring up our own memories, joys and sorrows.”                                                                                    
The Gazette

“Haunting . . . Shadow Child rings of the truth. Intimate, generous, but never confessional, Powning, in shimmering prose, comes to understand love and loss. . . . There is so much here, a celebration of selfhood, grief and renewal, and the spiritual solace of nature.”
National Post

“An honest and intensely felt book.”
The Toronto Sun

“Anyone who has experienced the loss of a child will relate to Powning’s painful and healing search for meaning in his death.”
Publishers Weekly

”Powning’s memoir is stirringly self-aware.”
US Booklist

“A joyous, optimistic book . . . emotional and visceral. . . . If this book is any indication, whatever Powning has to say will be well worth listening to.”
Chronicle Herald

“A beautifully written work. The words fly from the page and pierce the heart . . . uplifting.”
Telegraph-Journal

“There’s something magical about this book. . . . It’s refreshing to read how an ordinary life can still be magical.”
Toronto Star

“Beautifully written and powerful.”
Quill & Quire

 “An honest and intensely felt book.”
London Free Press

“Tenacious, unsparing, in anguish sometimes, but mostly with moving lyricism, Beth Powning pursues and completes what she calls her ‘apprenticeship in love and loss.’ a long and not easy journey that we all, women and men, in our way, try to carry through.”
Ernest Hillen, author of Small Mercies: A Boy After War

“Shadow Child is a beautifully written work. The words fly from the pages and pierce the heart. Powning is adept at painting pictures with words, bringing to life the lush countryside of her rural home, all the while circling back to the main theme of love and loss.”
The New Brunswick Reader