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Disturbing the Peace
Welcome to some revved-up, down-home writing where you'll meet two teenage sisters working in a sleazy Alaska Highway truckstop, the Pouce Coupe women's softball team, and an immigrant woman who finally takes the boat home.
139 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1990
About the author
Caroline Woodward
8 books49 followersCaroline Woodward is a writer and now-retired lighthouse keeper from the Lennard Island Lightstation, near Tofino, B.C. She has relocated to her favourite village, New Denver, B.C. where she and her husband founded the Motherlode Bookstore (1993-2001). She writes short and long fiction, poetry, children's picture books, for children aged 8-11, young adult fiction, non-fiction essays and articles, book reviews, sound pieces for CBC Radio and assorted other ephemera.
She grew up on a homestead in the north Peace River region of B.C. without benefit of electricity, TV, running water, computers, et cetera but with hundreds of acres of land, horses to ride, forts to build and a radio which ran on batteries. She wrote a weekly column for the Alaska Highway News for two years while in high school and after earning a B.A. at the University of British Columbia, she began publishing sporadic newspaper and magazine travel articles about her adventures overseas.
She worked as a volunteer in Sri Lanka with Canadian Crossroads International immediately following her graduation. While hiking in Nepal in 1981, she self-published a 12 page chapbook, A Blue Fable, on rice paper, a feat of naivety and courage lauded by the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun among others, with surprising sales ensuing. After returning from her travels in Asia and Europe to UBC to earn a Teacher's Certificate, she worked for the next two decades as a teacher at all levels from elementary school to college seminars teaching social studies and creative writing, as well as several tours as a group leader (17-21 year olds) with Canada World Youth to India and Sri Lanka, group home worker, adult protective services worker, gardener, and caretaker, writing all the while. She attended David Thompson University Centre's Creative Writing program in Nelson, BC and earned a Diploma in Creative Writing in 1984 which solidified and enlarged her understanding of the writer's task.
Her first collection of short fiction, Disturbing the Peace (Polestar: 1990, second printing 1995) was a finalist for the BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Stories from this collection have been anthologized for use in high school and university literature classes by Oxford University Press, Prentice-Hall, and Nelson (Canada), and in other collections by Second Story Press, Polestar Press and the Women's Press in Canada. Her second book, a novel, Alaska Highway Two-Step (Polestar: 1993), (Harbour Publishing: 2017) was a Globe & Mail Top 100 Books of 1993 and a finalist for the First Mystery Novel Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.
Work is a 4-Letter Word (2000), a collection of illustrated short fiction stories about entry level jobs was written for adult literacy students as a contract project sponsored by national and provincial literacy government education ministries and the regional literacy organization in the West Kootenays. Most importantly, it was written for and read out loud by Selkirk College adult literacy students in Nakusp, BC, the first readers and responders, and their instructors, Alison Alder and Richard Allin. Further, it was designed and produced as a final year project by Kootenay School of the Arts publishing program student, Laurie Burke and then distributed to 250 literacy programs across Canada.
In 2017, Northern Lights College awarded Caroline Woodward an honorary associate of arts degree to celebrate her literary contribution of books set in the Peace River region for adults and children, including Singing Away the Dark, which is now published in South Korea, Bulgaria, Quebec (Chanter Dans Le Noir, translated by Fanny Britt, published by Le Courte d'Échelle), China, Japan and the throughout the English-speaking world.
After a busy and varied career, mostly in publishing and bookselling as a manuscript reader, publicist, managing editor, author, playwright, reading series and festival organizer, creative writing teacher, books
She grew up on a homestead in the north Peace River region of B.C. without benefit of electricity, TV, running water, computers, et cetera but with hundreds of acres of land, horses to ride, forts to build and a radio which ran on batteries. She wrote a weekly column for the Alaska Highway News for two years while in high school and after earning a B.A. at the University of British Columbia, she began publishing sporadic newspaper and magazine travel articles about her adventures overseas.
She worked as a volunteer in Sri Lanka with Canadian Crossroads International immediately following her graduation. While hiking in Nepal in 1981, she self-published a 12 page chapbook, A Blue Fable, on rice paper, a feat of naivety and courage lauded by the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun among others, with surprising sales ensuing. After returning from her travels in Asia and Europe to UBC to earn a Teacher's Certificate, she worked for the next two decades as a teacher at all levels from elementary school to college seminars teaching social studies and creative writing, as well as several tours as a group leader (17-21 year olds) with Canada World Youth to India and Sri Lanka, group home worker, adult protective services worker, gardener, and caretaker, writing all the while. She attended David Thompson University Centre's Creative Writing program in Nelson, BC and earned a Diploma in Creative Writing in 1984 which solidified and enlarged her understanding of the writer's task.
Her first collection of short fiction, Disturbing the Peace (Polestar: 1990, second printing 1995) was a finalist for the BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Stories from this collection have been anthologized for use in high school and university literature classes by Oxford University Press, Prentice-Hall, and Nelson (Canada), and in other collections by Second Story Press, Polestar Press and the Women's Press in Canada. Her second book, a novel, Alaska Highway Two-Step (Polestar: 1993), (Harbour Publishing: 2017) was a Globe & Mail Top 100 Books of 1993 and a finalist for the First Mystery Novel Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.
Work is a 4-Letter Word (2000), a collection of illustrated short fiction stories about entry level jobs was written for adult literacy students as a contract project sponsored by national and provincial literacy government education ministries and the regional literacy organization in the West Kootenays. Most importantly, it was written for and read out loud by Selkirk College adult literacy students in Nakusp, BC, the first readers and responders, and their instructors, Alison Alder and Richard Allin. Further, it was designed and produced as a final year project by Kootenay School of the Arts publishing program student, Laurie Burke and then distributed to 250 literacy programs across Canada.
In 2017, Northern Lights College awarded Caroline Woodward an honorary associate of arts degree to celebrate her literary contribution of books set in the Peace River region for adults and children, including Singing Away the Dark, which is now published in South Korea, Bulgaria, Quebec (Chanter Dans Le Noir, translated by Fanny Britt, published by Le Courte d'Échelle), China, Japan and the throughout the English-speaking world.
After a busy and varied career, mostly in publishing and bookselling as a manuscript reader, publicist, managing editor, author, playwright, reading series and festival organizer, creative writing teacher, books
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