As the days slowly grew brighter and winter changed to spring, a community of graduate students attended to the basic elements of clear, clean, evocative creative writing.

Bare Elements offers honest, true, powerful insights, delving into the complexities of family, lovers, caregiving and the need for care, memories of birthplaces, homelessness, high school dances, and missed opportunities.

These new narratives emerged from a diverse, intergenerational community of new writers. Bare Elements is a vibrant collection of fresh, accessible, stripped-down writing.

Visit the Bare Elements Book Launch event page

Paula Applebaum

"Cosmic Pizza"

Erika Bailey

"Dinner at Vaire’s"
"Wychwood Park Pond"
"Last Train to Staplehurst"

Robert Bickford

"The Silver Infiniti Without the Pom-Poms"
"On the Way to Summer Camp"
"For the Love of Teaching"

Neena Chadha

"The Fall"
"Email"
"Sundays"

Kristen Evans

"Day Twenty-Nine"
"Grams’ House"

Nisha Haji

"Wilson Heights Community Centre"

Nicola Holmes

"One of the Boys"

Rachel James

"Diamond Heights"
"The First Stop"

Chinwe Osuji

"Two-Headed Gecko"
"Jules"
"TGF"

Jessica Outram

"Family Picnic Magic"

Rocco Racco

"Rosario"
"The Apology"
"Grandpa and Jim"

Norm Reynolds

"My Father’s Birthday"
"Canada Packers"

Mervi Maarit Salo

"Áhkka The Great Mother"
"Guovža The Bear"
"Kraja The Place One Longs For"

Sheila Stewart

"The Stadium"

Leanne Tonkin

"Lemonade from Lemons"

Penny Verbruggen

"Mr. Sims"
"The Brass Key"
"Behind the Cedars"
"Flying Down to Rio"

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Bare elements : a collective approach to narrative nonfiction / Summer Book Collective. (Life Rattle new writers series, ISSN 1200-5266 ; 35)
ISBN 978-1-897161-89-0
1. Creative nonfiction, Canadian (English)--Ontario--Toronto.
I. Summer Book Collective II. Series: Life Rattle new writers series ; 35
PS8257.T67B37 2010 C818’.603 C2010-907526-9