Still No Word

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EGALE Canada Human Rights Trust OUT IN PRINT Literary Award Winner! Shannon Webb-Campbell’s Still No Word seeks the appearance of the self in others and the recognition of others within the self. Patient, searching, questioning, and at times heartbreaking—these poems reveal the deep past within the present tense and the interrelations that make our lives somehow both whole and unfinished. And though Webb-Campbell is political at times, this is not politics for the sake of politics: here, it’s a matter of the human heart. Ranging from reflective to angry, from sensual to humourous, her poetry inhabits that mercurial space between the public and the private, making Still No Word a remarkably accomplished debut collection.

AUTHOR

Shannon Webb-Campbell

Shannon Webb-Campbell is a Mi’kmaq poet, wrtier, and critic. Her first book, Still No Word (2015) was the inaugural recipient of Egale Canada’s Out In Print Award. She was Canadian Women In the Literary Arts critic-in-resentices in 2014, and she currently sit’s on CWILA’s board of directors. Who Took My Sister? is her second book.

Reviews

“”Spurway’s use of language is skilful, making the novel highly readable. Crow is ribald, blunt, accessible, and immediately likeable, tumours and all … You know how people say, “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry”? You will. And you will.””
– Quill & Quire

“”Ridiculously good.””
– Globe and Mail

“”Crow delighted me and amazed me the further I read, with its freshness, its daring, its refusal to conform (and the projectile vomiting).””
– Pickle Me This

“”Angry, petty, disillusioned, sharp-tongued, battered and bruised by the years, prone to snap decisions and judgments, and yet not a little scared of dying at 40, she’s a complex and contradictory figure whose narrating tones relay very human traits — fallibility and indomitability, blindness and insight — via homespun, salty language.””
– Toronto Star

“”How can you resolve the sharpness of tragedy into a fairy-tale ending? Somehow, Spurway manages it. But even if she lays the sentimentality on pretty thick, she also proves even a Crow’s laughter can be pretty infectious.””
– Winnipeg Free Press

“”Tender, raw, and compassionate, Crow tackles the life-changing events thrown at her and muscles them down to her control, leaving readers breathless in the face of her honesty and hard-earned truths.””
“”Amy Spurway comes out swinging with this raw, unflinching, and emotionally urgent debut novel. Be forewarned, Crow is as empowering and comic as it is unsettling and disarming. I love it.””
“”I think Crow is great. It depicts a side of Cape Breton populated by characters that are flawed and achingly real. It’s poignant and funny.””
“”Amy Spurway catches perfectly the engine that is Cape Breton Island. Her cast of divine lunatics, pogey-scammers, gossips, and big-hearted rebels, revealed through Spurway’s lively and lucid prose, proves that Cape Breton is still the thought-control centre of Canada.””
“”There is dark desperation and there is the lightness of hope.””
– Canadian Literature

“”Engaging, relentlessly entertaining and written with enormous passion and great wit. Crow is a notable debut, and Amy Spurway is a writer worth watching.””
– The Fiddlehead

“”The most hilarious book I’ve ever read, a narrative voice that gets locked in your head, and a story full of twists and turns and surprises.””
– All Lit Up