Anik See: writing and producing, books and radio

Anik See is the author of postcard and other stories (Freehand Books, 2009), Saudade (Coach House Books, 2008), and A Fork in the Road (Macmillan, 2000). Her writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has appeared in Brick, Prairie Fire, the Fiddlehead, Geist, grain, The National Post, Toronto Life and, as a contributing editor, in Outpost Magazine, and has been nominated for numerous awards. She has also contributed to several anthologies. She appeared at the Vancouver International Writers Festival in October 2009.

postcard and other stories (Freehand Books, 2009)

In these six stories See meticulously deconstructs love, art, and identity, blurring the distinctions between momentary lust and long-term intimacy, and loss and fulfillment. Throughout these explorations of somewhat muddled lives, See demonstrates an uncanny ability to distill often unsettling truths in prose that is intelligent, subtle, and unerringly cool. Intricate yet precise, postcard and other stories offers the reader a lucid perspective on the blurry, bewildering business of being human.

“Emotionally complex, wistful and raw and surprising, postcard and other stories is a complicated pleasure. Infidelity, obsession, new love, loss—Anik See negotiates the intricacies of the adult world with an unerring instinct for what is true about our lives and ourselves. She is a real writer and I, for one, can’t wait for more.”
—Michael Crummey

“Anik See’s smart, charged stories are a vivid education in intoxication and desire, heart and hormones, math equations and trance DJs. She is a deft seer, ferocious and tender and glorious.”
—Mark Jarman

ISBN: 978-1-55111-925-0

$23.95

To hear a reading from postcard, click here: http://www.authorsaloud.com/

Saudade (Coach House Books, 2008)

The Portuguese word saudade describes a feeling of longing for something that is now gone, but that may yet return. In Saudade: The Possibilities of Place, traveller Anik See traces her attempts to reclaim this loss in a series of informal essays that take us from the salt plains of Wood Buffalo National Park and the mountains of BC to the fishing ports of Sri Lanka and the rough roads of Tbilisi.

Quietly and insistently interrogating the perceived distance between privilege and want, these thoughtful essays ask what we might accomplish if we said no to entitlement; if, instead, we used our privilege to help us better understand human nature. Throughout this psychogeographic diary, crowded with rituals of faith, death and renewal, See asks, again and again, ‘How much will be enough?’, and examines what it takes for us to feel alive in a time when our needs seem limitless, and always out of reach.

“Anik See’s Saudade is often disturbingly brilliant.  It reassures me that much of our experience of the world is still undescribed.  Saudade is fresh and utterly original.” – Jim Harrison

“What Anik See does is what, in other hands, might be called ‘travel writing,’ a kind of writing whose narratives usually entail a departure from ‘self’ and an arrival at ‘other’. Anik See’s essays elide these distinctions: she is protean, skeptical, empathetic, funny, and above all, willing. She lets the world discover her as well. The various nexii where these discoveries happen makes Saudade an unusually affecting and involving read, one that suggests the author has truly earned her last name.”- Michael Redhill

Saudade recently won third prize in the Alcuin Society’s non-fiction prose category of their design awards, and will be exhibited in Tokyo, Frankfurt and Leipzig, as well as across Canada.

ISBN-13: 978 155245 207 3
ISBN-10: 1 55245 207 7

$18.95 CAN
$16.95 US

To listen to a reading from Saudade, click here: http://www.authorsaloud.com/

And to hear an interview and a reading, click here:

http://www.chbooks.com/biographies/anik_see

A Fork in the Road (Macmillan Canada, 2000)

One of the most accessible entrees into another culture is its food – a lesson Anik See has learned well. In A Fork in the Road, See describes in loving detail her gastronomic forays into Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, and nine other countries. On bicycle, See travels the breathtaking mountains of Chiles Patagonia region and partakes of a roadside asado (barbecue). Riding into post-Soviet Georgia, she lunches with a mercenary-turned-cop, then continues to a wine-harvest feast in the mountains. In a savory twist on travel literature, each chapter concludes with selected recipes from her excursions, including Malaysian roti (flatbread), Mexican pozole (pork with hominy), and Georgian adzhapsandali (ratatouille). A Fork in the Road helps us realize that food, too, can be a language, where no common one is to be found.

“[It is] difficult not to be charmed by [See’s] sunny and disarming narrative, which is full of vivid details and telling moments. This is a hopeful and fascinating book for armchair travelers with a taste for exotic adventure.” — Publishers Weekly

“A Fork in the Road is one of the more interesting travel books to come out of Canada in the last few years.” — Outpost Magazine

“An impressive first book.” — Quill & Quire

To order any of these books, please send an email to aniksee@kpnplanet.nl or visit www.bookstage.com

To read an interview with Canadian poet rob mclennan, click here:

http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2009/09/12-or-20-questions-with-anik-see.html