Deserts: A Literary Companion

by Wayne Grady (Editor)

Next to rain forests, deserts are the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. In fact, a desert is never a single ecosystem but a concentration of dozens, ranging from arid flatlands to high mesas to canyons, and oases. Filled with unexpected life and unforgiving conditions, the desert evokes a vivid and passionate response from those who experience it and has inspired powerful literature. The writings in this collection celebrate this complex environment in all its wondrous guises. Among them, 19th-century explorer Sven Hedin staggers through a deadly sandstorm in the Taklamatan desert, whose name means "You enter and do not return." Ann Zwinger contemplates golden asters and rabbitbush in a lonely Utah canyon. Ariel Dorfman encounters time and memory in El Norte Grande. This fascinating anthology is the first in a series from Greystone Books celebrating a single natural or geographic phenomenon through the eyes of major world writers past and present.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published March 28, 2008

About the author

Wayne Grady is the award-winning author of Emancipation Day, a novel of denial and identity. He has also written such works of science and nature as The Bone Museum, Bringing Back the Dodo, The Quiet Limit of the World, and The Great Lakes, which won a National Outdoor Book Award in the U.S. With his wife, novelist Merilyn Simonds, he co-authored Breakfast at the Exit Café: Travels Through America. And with David Suzuki he co-wrote the international bestseller Tree: A Life Story.

He has also translated fourteen works of fiction from the French, by such authors as Antonine Maillet, Yves Beauchemin, and Danny Laferrière. In 1989, he won the Governor General’s Award for his translation of Maillet’s On the Eighth Day. His most recent translation is of Louis Hamelin’s October 1970, published by House of Anansi Press in 2013.

Grady teaches creative writing in the optional-residency MFA program at the University of British Columbia. He and Merilyn Simonds live in the country north of Kingston, Ontario.