Upfronts

by Joseph Boyden (Contributor)

Upfronts is a semi-annual digital publication that features selections from new and upcoming Hamish Hamilton titles. Download your copy and discover the most exciting writing Canada and the world has to offer. Our inaugural issue, released in winter 2013, features an exclusive preview of Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Joseph Boyden’s forthcoming novel, The Orenda, as well as excerpts from new works by Colin McAdam, D.W. Wilson and Michael Winter. Joseph Boyden was awarded the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his sophomore novel, Through Black Spruce. His debut, Three Day Road, won the Amazon/Books in Canada Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. The Orenda, available in September 2013, is a visceral story of love and war, steeped in the natural beauty and blood-soaked brutality of our country’s formative years. Colin McAdam’s debut, Some Great Thing, won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His second novel, Fall, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His new novel, A Beautiful Truth, available now, is a remarkable story about the simple truths that transcend species, the meaning of family and the capacity for survival. D.W. Wilson won the BBC Short Story Prize and the inaugural Man Booker Scholarship. His collection Once You Break a Knuckle was published internationally in 2011 to rave reviews. His debut novel, Ballistics, available in May 2013, is a bracing and beautiful story about family and fatherhood in the B.C. interior, complicated by war, history and the U.S. border. Michael Winter has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Trillium Book Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His new novel, Minister Without Portfolio, coming in September 2013, reads like the Deer Hunter in reverse, chronicling the domestic catastrophes and reconciliations that follow a fatal fire fight in Afghanistan.

496 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 19, 2013

About the author

Joseph Boyden is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.

He grew up in Willowdale, North York, Ontario and attended the Jesuit-run Brebeuf College School. Boyden's father Raymond Wilfrid Boyden was a medical officer renowned for his bravery, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and was the highest-decorated medical officer of World War II.

Boyden, of Irish, Scottish and Métis heritage, writes about First Nations heritage and culture. Three Day Road, a novel about two Cree soldiers serving in the Canadian military during World War I, is inspired by Ojibwa Francis Pegahmagabow, the legendary First World War sniper. Boyden's second novel, Through Black Spruce follows the story of Will, son of one of the characters in Three Day Road. He has indicated in interviews that the titles are part of a planned trilogy, the third of which is forthcoming.

He studied creative writing at York University and the University of New Orleans, and subsequently taught in the Aboriginal Student Program at Northern College. He divides his time between Louisiana, where he and his wife, Amanda Boyden, are writers in residence, and Northern Ontario.