Writing this novel, and thinking about it in the ramp up to its publication date, has done all of these things. Researching forest fires especially, I sometimes felt like River does watching clips and news stories about the fire that puts his mom on evacuation alert, sadness “like a log across his chest,” and I’d struggle with what can seem like an inevitability, that “from now on things [will] just get worse and worse.” There is a lot of climate grief in The Fall-Down Effect. Characters reflect on the increasing frequency and severity of forest fires; activist and government-worker characters alike feel, at times, defeated when they think of the environmental and climate costs of the logging industry; parents worry about the world their children will inherit. And yet, at the same time, each of the characters also tend to and preserve their hope for and connection to the natural world. None of them are going to quit caring for and about the planet. None of them will give up the fight and there’s nothing they can do.

y novel began as a book about the hidden lives of wealthy retired people living in a fictional small town in Ontario that had transitioned from agricultural to a winery- and tourist-based economy. When one character with a past in wartime Germany emerged, threads opened up that I turned into storylines about the responsibility to remember and be accountable for atrocities in World War 2. 

Frontenac House Press has published a gorgeous reissue of Bruce Hunter’s award-winning novel of love, disability, and wildness, In the Bear’s House(May 23, 2025.)

Set in 1960s Calgary and Alberta ‘s backcountry, this reissue of In the Bear’s House tells the story of a creative young mother, Clare Dunlop, raising her deaf son against the insurmountable odds of poverty, mental illness and hardship. In the Bear’s House is ultimately about listening to the wild and the wilderness, and what we lose when it’s gone.

We are honoured to have Bruce join us to answer a question about the rebirth of his much-loved story.

May is National Short Story Month and we’re kicking it off with a brief and salient interview with award-winning multi-genre writer Sharon Berg, author of many books, including the short fiction collection, Naming the Shadows (Porcupine’s Quill 2019). Never one to shy away from tough conversations, we ask Sharon about writing difficult subjects as a necessary part of the responsibility we bear for one another.