Michael Crummey

Michael Crummey

In 1994, Michael Crummey won the inaugural RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry and he’s been racking up nominations and awards for his work ever since. A prolific author of both poetry and historical fiction, Crummey’s first novel River Thieves was a finalist for the 2001 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and his second novel The Wreckage was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His third novel, Galore, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), was shortlisted for the 2011 IMPAC Award, and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His last novel, Sweetland, was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Twitter: @michaelcrummey

A gripping and credible page-turner about children surviving in the wilderness, but more than that: this Adam and Eve struggle to make sense of a world that’s somewhere between Eden and Hell. Michael Crummey writes like an avenging angel, never putting a word wrong.” ­— Emma Donoghue

FESTIVAL BOOK

The Innocents

A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family’s boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them. As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.

The Innocents is richly imagined and compulsively readable, a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between brother and sister. By turns electrifying and heartbreaking, it is a testament to the bounty and barbarity of the world, to the wonders and strangeness of our individual selves.

DIVE DEEPER

Interviews

  • “Michael Crummey on loss, death and campaigning for literary prizes” — CBC.ca
  • “Most of what follows is true: Michael Crummey on writing and the relationship between fact and fiction” — CBC.ca
  • “The Chat with Michael Crummey” — 49th Shelf

ALL EVENTS WITH Michael Crummey

6:30 PM
Canadiana Showcase
Oct 17 @ 6:30 PM MT - 8 PM MT

Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall, Central Library

800 3 Street SE
8:30 AM
A Morning with Michael Crummey & Steven Price
Oct 18 @ 8:30 AM MT - 10:30 AM MT

Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor

1221 2 St SW