Return Stroke (CMU $20) is a collection of Dora Dueck's creative non-fiction and gathers ten of the author's personal essays as well as a memoir of 1980s life in the Paraguayan Chaco. From publicity for the book: "Graceful, curious and probing, these pieces are like a series of occasionally restless love letters -- to her husband and her children, to her sometimes crusty Mennonite ancestors, to the gift of writing, to the vocation of being a keen observer."

All That Belongs (Turnstone $19) is Dueck's novel about a recently-retired archivist who turns her attention to the difficult stories in her own family including a problematic uncle and a troubled brother. Dueck creatively combines details of the mundane -- such as an uncle nicknamed 'Uncle Must' who came from Russia, whose real name is Gerhard,  which in English is George -- with a poet's turn of phrase: e.g. when describing a woman wearing a caftan who is leaving and watching "the hem of her dress undulating around her legs like a wave goodbye."

Dueck's second novel, This Hidden Thing, won the 2010 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. What You Get At Home (Turnstone Press, 2012) won the High Plains Award for Short Stories. Dueck’s novella, Mask, was also the winning entry for the 2014 Malahat Review novella contest.

Dueck grew up in a Mennonite community in Alberta, lived for many years in Winnipeg, and eventually moved to Delta, BC.

BOOKS:

Return Stroke: essays and memoir (CMU Press, 2022) $20 9781987986105
All That Belongs (Turnstone, 2019) $19 978-0-8880-1681-2
What you Get At Home (Turnstone, 2013) $19 978-0-88801-404-7
This Hidden Thing (CMU Press, 2010) 978-0920718865
Under the Still Standing Sun (1989)

[BCBW 2022]