Who? Where?

“Fish Gotta Swim Editions is a small, international press overseen by Theresa Kishkan in Canada, and Anik See in The Netherlands. It specializes in novellas and other innovative prose forms, published in visually attractive, limited print runs. We believe these forms should be well-represented, and not ignored because publishers are convinced they aren’t popular enough to invest in.” (About.)

First encounter?

I bought Theresa Kishkan’s Sisters of Grass (2000) from a local indie bookshop and loaned it out before I’d read it myself, but finally read Mnemonic: The Book of Trees (2011).

Read Indies: Hosted by Karen and Lizzy

Fish Gotta Swim Reading:

When bookchatting here, I frequently focus on the writing rather than the story; this seems even more essential when discussing novellas, to avert spoilers.

So I’ll share some passages from the three Fish Gotta Swim Publications (a fourth is due in May, Susanna Hall, Her Book by Jen Falkner) that gave me pause because they offer glimpses of the novellas’s themes, as well as authorial voices.

Theresa Kishkan’s Winter Wren (2016) was the first of Fish Gotta Swim’s offerings. The novella’s style and tone reminds me of Janice Kulyk Keefer for the balance between solitary women finding their way and artistic passions, Sharon Butala for the deliberate and transfixing tone, and Anne Cameron for the west-coast feel and the focus on love and connection. (As a side-note, I love that my notes from this book are stored next to notes from Tamai Kobayashi’s debut novel Prairie Ostrich. Thar be birds here.)

My favourite aspect of this story is the sense that time is folded into story like cranberries into batter: readers are gently immersed and, soon, encompassed. Like this: “The grandfather who’d taken her on outings during that long-ago childhood and who told her stories of her father, who was always a boy.”

In ordinary details, she reminds us that we are never far from the question of what endures and what is lost: “And was surprised to see tiny shells embedded in the stone. In fact the wall was busy with them—clams, fragments of limpet, oyster.” Asks us to consider how we are solitary and how we connect and, further, how we think about solitude and companionship: “He heard harmony, almost, the bird its own counterpoint, but realized it was another wren, further away.”

And invites us to reframe our perspective: “Each frame of the nine-paned window: a different view. What would a composition of nine frames be called? Three, a triptych; two, a diptych. And nine?” What might you see in those nine frames: books, art, France, Tlingit country, a whale skeleton, arbutus trees, notebooks, Koh-i-noor pencils, and Ingres paper. With grace and compassion, the story seems designed to nourish readers, even as the thread of yearning settles atop the dough.

Next came Frances Boyle’s Tower (2018). From the first page, this passage alerts readers that this story’s core is relationships: the network of connections, with every person central to individual drama, peripheral to others. “Irma shot me a quick glance, as she and the other woman dipped their heads toward each other and continued to talk.” You can easily imagine the scenes in Boyle’s fiction. Ordinary and expressive language (darndest and squarish) and just enough detail (about the straw around the rhubarb plants or the contents of photographs on the mantel).

And she’s not simply reporting on the relationships; she’s offering different perspectives, resituating readers from section to section in the novella: “She rubs a circle clear in the misted window beside her table, watches Arlys navigate the puddles until she is out of sight. Takes a spoon and stirs, obscuring the fern-leaf pattern the barista’s made in the foam, mixing the milk and the coffee.”

Glimpses of transformation galvanize the quiet story: “Her increasingly strange body, belly pooching out. The difference now that the pregnancy’s showing is enough to throw off her balance as she leans to strip beds, vacuum, polish taps and mirrors, barely aware of her own reflection, distant behind the glass.” This novella considers a span of time: characters age and networks broaden.

When Barbara Lambert’s Wanda (2021) opens, readers meet a mature woman with a lifetime of accumulated experiences and sorrows. A self-aware woman reflecting on people and events that have shaped her. The lingering shortfalls: “How need can hollow you out. How a shameful weakness can follow you all your life.” The persistence of accommodation and sacrifice: “On and on. Again and again. Husbands. Lovers. All that giving in.”

Eva reflects on her younger years, her friendship with Wanda, a pivotal relationship in her memory, for what it encapsulates about propriety and shame, class and difference. She’s also aware of the impact of time’s passing on her thoughts and feelings.

“Eva feels dreaminess slip over her as everything around follows her into a half dream, the shingled barn, the two horse heads that her father carved on the roof peak, the path leading up the mountain behind, and the girl sitting on the horse, braiding Polly’s mane with deft stubby fingers (braiding, something Eva’s mother tried to teach her child and gave up, so that she still has to do Eva’s braids each morning)-maybe this isn’t even a story Eva is making up, maybe it is a story the girl is making up. Maybe that is why this girl is here. To tell Eva her own story, to pull her right into that story.”

The power that resides in story simmers beneath the surface of Wanda, occasionally erupts: “Words are just wonderful, the way they can make little boxes for your thoughts.” Even as a girl, Eva realises that she “isn’t used to talking much, except in her head.” Both the scenes residing in memory, and the present-day Eva’s commentary contain gentle but profound epiphanies: “They seem like different people and everything else is different too, as if she’s crossed a bridge in herself.”

Each of these novellas feels like a different facet in a jewelled setting of women’s experiences. Not so much shiny, as polished. Not so much sensitive as tender. Not so much short as full.