Sharon Butala is the author of more than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, numerous essays and articles, some poetry, and five produced plays. Her first novel, Country of the Heart, was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was followed by a collection of short stories, Queen of the Headaches. Butala’s books have been on Canadian bestseller lists; her memoir, The Perfection of the Morning, reached #1. Her story collection, Season of Fury and Wonder, was nominated for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and won the 2020 City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Butala has three times been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. She is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and the 2012 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. In 2002, she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. Butala lives in Saskatoon.
After an isolating and demoralizing year during the COVID-19 pandemic, a friend invites Sharon Butala to join her on a road trip—together they will drive the thirteen hundred kilometers from Calgary to Winnipeg, stopping as they please along the way. Butala, relieved for a change of scenery, is keen to see again some of the locations that have been significant to her life on the prairies, including the ranch she lived on for 33 years with her husband before his death.
But along the way, the sites they visit—landmarks of Indigenous history, sites where her ancestors struggled to eke out a living—prompt Butala to unearth her own personal history. She sifts through memories of a difficult childhood, of traumas deeply buried, of relationships both complicated and gratifying. Taking stock of the people and places she has lost and left behind brings her to the ultimate confrontation—with mortality—which she explores with uncommon wisdom and frankness.
Butala’s most intimate work to date, How to Breathe Water is a love letter to the lands and waters of the prairies and a stirring exploration of the places and moments that mark and mold our lives.
Writing at the top of her game, Sharon Butala returns to the short story in this astounding new collection. In Butala’s world, the season of fury and wonder is the season of old age. The stories in this book are the stories of women who have had experiences; women who have seen much of life and have felt the joy of success and the sting of shortcomings; women who hold opinions and come to conclusions about the lives they’ve lived.
But Sharon Butala gives us more—not only is each story an observation on aging, each story in Season of Fury and Wonder pays tribute to a classic work of literature that has had an impact on Butala’s writing. Among these writers are Raymond Carver, Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor, John Cheever, James Joyce, Shirley Jackson, Anton Chekhov, Alan Sillitoe, Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allan Poe. The result of Butala’s effort is a series of deeply felt tributes to these writers, to the creativity and their power to inspire.
At once a meditation on the world of nature and a personal and spiritual exploration of the roots of creativity, The Perfection of the Morning is Sharon Butala’s search for a connection with the prairie that encompassed and often overwhelmed her.
When it was first published a decade ago, The Perfection of the Morning catapulted Sharon Butala into literary stardom, causing the Toronto Star to crown her as “one of this country’s true visionaries.”
Starring Sharon Butala & Merilyn Simonds. Hosted by Rosemary Griebel
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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