Helen Humphreys

Into the writer’s isolation comes a dog, to sit beside the chair or to lie on the couch while the writer works, to force them outside for a walk, and suddenly, although still lonely, the writer has a companion An artist’s solitude is a sacred space, one to be guarded and kept apart from the chaos of the world. This isolation allows for uninhibited wandering, uninterrupted meditation and the nurturing of sparks of inspiration into fires of creation....

Alcuin Citation in 1991 for excellence in book design in Canada. Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios is a work in the hazard of retrieval. What sticks in retrospect? Seldom what you would expect, not always the happiness. Otherwise you could train for life, you could actually learn from grandmothers, mothers; poems -- those bodies of lines and spaces -- would not appear unbidden bearing news you hold your breath to hear. Helen Humphreys comes...

Award-winning poet and novelist Helen Humphreys returns to her series of nature meditations in this gorgeously written and illustrated book that takes a deep look at the forgotten world of herbariums and the people who amassed collections of plant specimens in the 19th and 20th centuries. From Emily Dickinson's and Henry David Thoreau's collections, to the amateur naturalists, whose names are forgotten, but whose collections still grace our world,...

A stunning novel of love, loss and redemption, Coventry was published to rave reviews and became an instant bestseller in 2008. The Gazette (Montreal) called it "a small gem. . . . A beautifully sculpted, meticulously researched work." The novel opens on the fateful evening of November 14, 1940, when from her post as a firewatcher on the roof of Coventry Cathedral, Harriet watches the waves of German bombers approach. As the city is consumed by firestorms,...

When Charles Sainte-Beuve, an ambitious French journalist, meets Victor Hugo, a young writer on the verge of fame, he finds himself in a world of great passions, a world where words can become swords. But, to Charles' surprise, he is more attracted to Victor's long-suffering wife, Adèle. When the two lovers create a scandal in Paris, Victor exacts his price for betrayal. Set during the tumultuous reign of Napoleon III, and sweeping from France to...

Physical and fiercely lyric, Helen Humphreys' Anthem is a litany of want. A song of poverty and of desire, of the reach forward and the relentless backward glance. With stark images and subtle, tensile strength, her poems touch that rare interval between presence and absence, echo and answer, between wall and window and sky -- that gap in which we live, the space words make.

Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn...

When Charles Sainte-Beuve, an ambitious French journalist, meets Victor Hugo, a young writer on the verge of fame, he finds himself in a world of great passions, a world in which words can become swords. Soon Charles finds himself attracted to Victor's long-suffering wife, Adele. Set during the tumultuous reign of Napoleon III, and sweeping from France to the Channel Islands, to Halifax and back, this book draws on a rich portrait of the old city,...

Resigned to living out the Second World War in a German POW camp, James Hunter, an English officer, begins studying a pair of redstarts near the camp. His interest in the birds captures the attention of the Kommandant and gives James cause to fear for his life. Meanwhile, back in England, James's young wife, Rose, falls headlong into a passionate affair with another man. With wonderfully developed characters, exquisitely shaped by and reflected in...

On August 1, 1933, two young women, the famous aviatrix Grace O'Gorman and the inexperienced Willa Briggs, take off in a tiny Moth biplane to break the world flight endurance record. Their plan: to circle above the city of Toronto for twenty-five days. So begins Leaving Earth, a haunting evocation of an era when heroic women defied the limitations of their sex by embarking on perilous ventures. Sponsored by the Adventure Girl Almanac, "Air Ace...