A Song for Nettie Johnson (32 page)

“Mother’s Day” appeared in
New Canadian Writers,
Doubleday, and in
3x5
; “The Ground You Stand On” in
NeWest Review
(Saskatchewan), and as “Hang Out Your Washing on the Seigfried Line” in
3x5
, and
Alberta Bound,
NeWest Press, Fred Stenson, ed.; “Haircut” and an excerpt from “A Song for Nettie Johnson” in
Other Voices,
Edmonton; “The Dolphins” in
The Road Home,
Reidmore Books, Fred Stenson, ed.; “Hosea’s Children” in
Intersections,
The Banff Centre Press, Edna Alford, ed.

I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council, and Noboru Sawai, during the writing of these stories.

Thank you to my intricately precise and ever encouraging editor, Edna Alford. And to friends who have read these stories and who, by their thoughtful criticism, have also helped to make them better: Ruth Krahn, Theresa Shea, and Merna Summers.

Several of the songs that appear in
this collection deserve particular acknowledgement: “Mid Pleasures and Palaces,” by John Howard Payne (1792-1852); “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth,” by Paul Gerhardt (1607 - 1679); “The Morning Star” by Philipp Nicolai (1566 - 1608); and “The Holy City,” by E. Weatherly (1848 - 1929); and “Jesus, Priceless Treasure,” by Johann Franck (1618 - 1677).

~

Photo: Marilyn Tungland

About the Author

Gloria Ostrem Sawai
was a fiction writer, teacher, playwright, and one time actor and theatre director. Her short fiction has been published in anthologies in Canada, the United States, England, Spain, Denmark and Japan; and her plays have had professional productions. This is her first book-length collection of short stories.

Born in Minneapolis, she spent her childhood in Saskatchewan. As an adult, she lived in Japan, the US and Canada. She attended high school at Camrose Lutheran College in Camrose, Alberta, received a BA degree from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, and
an MFA from the University of Montana. She taught creative writing at the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Saskatchewan School of the Arts, and at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton.
Gloria Sawai passed away in Edmonton in 2011.