Michael Crummey stops at Acadia University for book reading
The affable Newfoundland author Michael Crummey read from his new novel, Sweetland, recently at Acadia University.
Acadia English professor Herb Wyile called Sweetland Crummey’s best novel yet.
Set in present-day Newfoundland and revolving around the issue of re-settlement programs that move people out of small communities and away from their traditional lifestyles, Sweetland is a powerful tale of one man’s refusal to go with the times - and the consequences he must face as a result. Sweetland is set on a fictional island.
Crummey said he has circumnavigated his native province in stages to collect sto- ries and explore characters that inspire his fiction.
Since the cod moratorium was laid down 22 years ago, Crummey said there is little to sustain outport communities and young people have left. He described visiting Little Bay Islands, where it takes a three or four hour journey to get groceries or visit a doctor.
According to Crummey, writing a novel takes him about five years, including research and editing. He said he was influenced by his storytelling father.
Born in Buchans in 1965, Crummey grew up there and in Wabush, Labrador, where he moved with his family in the late 1970s. He began to write poetry while studying at Memorial University. He completed a masters program at Queens University in 1988, then dropped out of a doctorate program to pursue his writing career. Crummey returned to St. John’s in 2001.
Crummey’s debut novel, River Thieves, became a Canadian bestseller in 2001. He has also written The Wreckage and Galore. In 1998, he produced a collection of short stories, Flesh and Blood, which takes place in the fictional mining community of Black Rock.
River Thieves details the contact and conflict between European settlers and the last of the Beothuk people in the early 19th century, while The Wreckage tells the story of a young Newfoundland soldier and his beloved during and after the Second World War.
Crummey also researched and wrote the National Film Board short film 54 Hours on the 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster.