Dropped Threads

What are those life experiences that catch us by surprise, that haven’t ever been part of our discussions or readings because they lie beyond the limit of words or the courage and will to articulate?
When Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson began asking other women – friends, colleagues, family members - what experiences had amazed them, disappointed them, caught them unprepared, the responses were immediate. Many women reacted as though this question was something they had been waiting to be asked, for years. Silences had been observed – and needed to be broken.
Dropped Threads is the remarkable collection of reflective writings that emerged. The contributors are from a wide range if professions and lifestyles and their pieces are immediate, intelligent and revealing. Many names will be familiar: Margaret Atwood, Eleanor Wachtel, Bonnie Burnard, June Callwood, Marni Jackson, Sharon Butala. But there are also revelatory pieces from new voices, women academics, politicians, homemakers and lawyers who dare to pick up some of the dropped threads from the fabric of women’s communication.
A beautiful woven tapestry of perspectives on the silences that women still keep, Dropped Threads offers a community of voices that readers – not just women – will want to hear. Perhaps readers will, in turn, find the strength to examine the areas of surprise and silences in their own lives. – back cover of print version

“There are exciting and truly intimate entries in this book…these women take ideas, even secret ones, and infuse them with poetry, scoured and buffed sentences and …stopwatch comic timing…The true depth of the collection is found in these women’s clear memories and their willingness to share.” – Quill & Quire

“if the value of books were measured by the insights stored within their pages, Dropped Threads would be priceless… [This] is a wonderfully well-written and excellently edited book that offers such intimate insights that it sometimes seems like a stream of consciousness. The compositions frequently make the reader feel like an eavesdropper -- and an extremely entertained one at that…The stories in Dropped Threads cathartically tie up loose ends for their writers, while providing readers with an exquisitely crafted patchwork quilt of life experiences.” -- Winnipeg Free Press

“It’s a collection of revealing essays and short stories by 35 Canadian women at mid-life and beyond, reflecting on the life events that caught them off guard and, somehow, haven’t been talked about…As it turns out, there are many dropped threads in our lives. Weave them together and you’ve got a tapestry.” -- Bonnie Schiedel, Chatelaine, April 2001

CONTRIBUTORS
MARGARET ATWOOD, JOAN BARFOOT, JANET E. BRADLEY, MARTHA BROOKS, BONNIE BURNARD, SHARON BUTALA, JUNE CALLWOOD, HONORABLE SHARON CARSTAIRS, CLAUDIA CASPER, JOAN CLARK, NINA LEE COLWILL, LORNA CROZIER, SANDY FRANCES DUNCAN, HELEN FOGWILL PORTER, KATHERINE C. H. GARDINER, ANNE GIARDINI, KATHERINE GOVIER, CHARLOTTE GRAY, ANNE HART, CAROL HUSSA HARVEY, BLANCHE HOWARD, ISABEL HUGGAN, MARNI JACKSON, ISLA JAMES, SUSAN LIGHTSTONE, KATHERINE MARTENS, JAQUELINE McLEOD ROGERS, LILY REDMOND, DEBORAH SCHNITZER, RENATE SCHULZ, MARGARET SHAW-MACKINNON, MIRIAM TOEWS, ELEANOR WACHTEL, ROSALIE WEAVER, BETTY JANE WYLIE.