About the Author
Alissa York’s new novel, Far Cry, is due out in March 2023. Her internationally acclaimed novels include Mercy, Effigy (shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize), Fauna and The Naturalist (winner of the Canadian Author’s Association Fiction Award). Stories from her short fiction collection, Any Given Power, have won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award; her essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Brick magazine and elsewhere. York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her husband, artist Clive Holden. She teaches Creative Writing at the Humber School for Writers.
Alissa York’s new novel, Far Cry, is due out in March 2023. Her internationally acclaimed novels include Mercy, Effigy (shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize), Fauna and The Naturalist (winner of the Canadian Author’s Association Fiction Award). Stories from her short fiction collection, Any Given Power, have won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award; her essays and articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Brick magazine and elsewhere. York has lived all over Canada and now makes her home in Toronto with her husband, artist Clive Holden. She teaches Creative Writing at the Humber School for Writers.
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About Far Cry
“Far Cry is a brilliant, hypnotic work—a collision of invisible, unforgettable lives. It asks what we owe to duty, to family and to love, and gives us the language, and the heart, to bear the beautiful complexity of the answers.” –Madeleine Thien, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“Far Cry is a mystery set in a small west coast fishing village, wrapped tightly in kelp, unfolding to the rhythm of the sea. Not only did I become lost in a different time, but this novel brought my heart to a new place. I lived inside these characters; their impulses, their losses, and their loves were mine. This is historical fiction meticulously crafted by one of our finest writers. –Claire Cameron, author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal
“Far Cry gives the best gift of fiction: a bracing, electrifying dive into another world, other lives. Period doesn’t enter into it—this is reality. By exact and convincing detail, interior and exterior, York inhabits this fishing life. Not shrinking from pain or violence, she sends her line farther down to create an underlying elegy to the natural world, now so changed. The unstoppable tidal flow of the book’s inevitable conclusion, the knotting and unknotting of the long net these people struggle within—that is true art.” –Marina Endicott, author of The Difference
“There is a vivid rush of sea air and immediately you are immersed in this finely crafted historical novel, gripped by its world and characters until you reach the powerful, tragic conclusion. This book will stay with me for a long time.” –Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze and Dream Sequence
“Rich and strange—Alissa York’s story of the west coast is so embodied, real, visceral, you can smell the canneries, feel the strangeness of basking sharks the length of a bus, of salmon whacking the hull of a gillnetter in their shocking plenty. Far Cry rests inside its world with authority and magic, shedding light on what the real and secret lives of women and men must have contained: the confusion, the love, the quicksand of attraction, the poverty and mayhem. The sea.” –Shaena Lambert, author of Petra and Oh, My Darling
“Beautiful and deeply moving, Alissa York's Far Cry immerses its readers in the tumultuous early years of Canada's west coast fisheries, chronicling with meticulous care a world now lost. This is a devastating, fiercely intelligent novel about love, desire, and loss, and the secrets that bind them.” –Steven Price, author of By Gaslight and Lampedusa
“Far Cry is a mystery that only reveals the whole, shocking truth in the final pages, where the pieces come together with an almost audible snap.” –Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander and Ridgerunner
About The Naturalist
“I fell so hard in love with this book because it convinced me of something I need to know and forever remember, which is that the human heart will always, inevitably, be revealed and that the human heart, when working well, is a WILD heart—and that giving in to one’s wild heart is not incompatible with human decency. The Naturalist will join those few other books on my shelf that remind me how to live.” –Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking
“Alissa York taps the wisdom and intelligence that belongs to all nature. Her writing on animals is simply unparalleled: her love and understanding as clear as her prose, which is elegant, polished, selfless, and wild. This book is the best of adventures, a genuine journey upriver into another world—embark!” –Marina Endicott, author of The Difference
About Fauna
“Fauna is the sort of rare novel that can change the way you see your world. Its cast of misfits and dreamers is united by their visceral connection to the forgotten animals surviving in the green patches of our big cities. This book is beautiful, unusual and memorable. And Alissa York is a daring and original talent.” –Jim Lynch, author of Border Songs
“Layered with astonishing detail, with every location vividly evoked and every action a visceral experience.” –The Globe and Mail
About Effigy
“York’s writing is graphic and impressionistic, sharp-edged and sensual. Though both style and landscape at times bring to mind Annie Dillard and Cormac McCarthy, York’s voice is very much her own.” –Quill & Quire
“York’s mesmerizing tale is rich in historical detail and driven by a cast of deftly drawn and perfectly memorable characters ... A wonderful book.” –Lori Lansens, author of This Little Light
About Mercy
“A debut that’s pure magic... [Mercy] is stunning in its emotive power and emotional resonance. York’s prose is taut and finely honed; her themes and the characters and settings that propel them are far-reaching and profound. It’s sensual, full of yearning and longing for the heat of love.” –The Hamilton Spectator
“Alissa York is perched on the edge of literary big time with the launch of her debut novel. An intelligent and largely riveting story... spectacular.” –The Winnipeg Free Press
About Any Given Power
“Some events in life — loves, losses, injuries, dark discoveries — enter us by force and linger on as symbols that soothe or plague us in ways we barely understand. York has considered these mysteries and turned them into prose that quietly sings. The best of these stories support the note-by-note song with brilliant structure, hitting body and spirit together.” –The Globe and Mail
“The touchstone of truth in a fictional world is a surprise. When the least expected things seem inevitable and contrived, the reader has shared the most generous of all seductions. Alissa York cares fiercely for the integrity of her characters and never intrudes herself upon them, or us. These are truly original stories, charged with the luminous detail which makes us see life afresh.” –Séan Virgo, author of A Traveller Came By
“Far Cry is a brilliant, hypnotic work—a collision of invisible, unforgettable lives. It asks what we owe to duty, to family and to love, and gives us the language, and the heart, to bear the beautiful complexity of the answers.” –Madeleine Thien, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“Far Cry is a mystery set in a small west coast fishing village, wrapped tightly in kelp, unfolding to the rhythm of the sea. Not only did I become lost in a different time, but this novel brought my heart to a new place. I lived inside these characters; their impulses, their losses, and their loves were mine. This is historical fiction meticulously crafted by one of our finest writers. –Claire Cameron, author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal
“Far Cry gives the best gift of fiction: a bracing, electrifying dive into another world, other lives. Period doesn’t enter into it—this is reality. By exact and convincing detail, interior and exterior, York inhabits this fishing life. Not shrinking from pain or violence, she sends her line farther down to create an underlying elegy to the natural world, now so changed. The unstoppable tidal flow of the book’s inevitable conclusion, the knotting and unknotting of the long net these people struggle within—that is true art.” –Marina Endicott, author of The Difference
“There is a vivid rush of sea air and immediately you are immersed in this finely crafted historical novel, gripped by its world and characters until you reach the powerful, tragic conclusion. This book will stay with me for a long time.” –Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze and Dream Sequence
“Rich and strange—Alissa York’s story of the west coast is so embodied, real, visceral, you can smell the canneries, feel the strangeness of basking sharks the length of a bus, of salmon whacking the hull of a gillnetter in their shocking plenty. Far Cry rests inside its world with authority and magic, shedding light on what the real and secret lives of women and men must have contained: the confusion, the love, the quicksand of attraction, the poverty and mayhem. The sea.” –Shaena Lambert, author of Petra and Oh, My Darling
“Beautiful and deeply moving, Alissa York's Far Cry immerses its readers in the tumultuous early years of Canada's west coast fisheries, chronicling with meticulous care a world now lost. This is a devastating, fiercely intelligent novel about love, desire, and loss, and the secrets that bind them.” –Steven Price, author of By Gaslight and Lampedusa
“Far Cry is a mystery that only reveals the whole, shocking truth in the final pages, where the pieces come together with an almost audible snap.” –Gil Adamson, author of The Outlander and Ridgerunner
About The Naturalist
“I fell so hard in love with this book because it convinced me of something I need to know and forever remember, which is that the human heart will always, inevitably, be revealed and that the human heart, when working well, is a WILD heart—and that giving in to one’s wild heart is not incompatible with human decency. The Naturalist will join those few other books on my shelf that remind me how to live.” –Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking
“Alissa York taps the wisdom and intelligence that belongs to all nature. Her writing on animals is simply unparalleled: her love and understanding as clear as her prose, which is elegant, polished, selfless, and wild. This book is the best of adventures, a genuine journey upriver into another world—embark!” –Marina Endicott, author of The Difference
About Fauna
“Fauna is the sort of rare novel that can change the way you see your world. Its cast of misfits and dreamers is united by their visceral connection to the forgotten animals surviving in the green patches of our big cities. This book is beautiful, unusual and memorable. And Alissa York is a daring and original talent.” –Jim Lynch, author of Border Songs
“Layered with astonishing detail, with every location vividly evoked and every action a visceral experience.” –The Globe and Mail
About Effigy
“York’s writing is graphic and impressionistic, sharp-edged and sensual. Though both style and landscape at times bring to mind Annie Dillard and Cormac McCarthy, York’s voice is very much her own.” –Quill & Quire
“York’s mesmerizing tale is rich in historical detail and driven by a cast of deftly drawn and perfectly memorable characters ... A wonderful book.” –Lori Lansens, author of This Little Light
About Mercy
“A debut that’s pure magic... [Mercy] is stunning in its emotive power and emotional resonance. York’s prose is taut and finely honed; her themes and the characters and settings that propel them are far-reaching and profound. It’s sensual, full of yearning and longing for the heat of love.” –The Hamilton Spectator
“Alissa York is perched on the edge of literary big time with the launch of her debut novel. An intelligent and largely riveting story... spectacular.” –The Winnipeg Free Press
About Any Given Power
“Some events in life — loves, losses, injuries, dark discoveries — enter us by force and linger on as symbols that soothe or plague us in ways we barely understand. York has considered these mysteries and turned them into prose that quietly sings. The best of these stories support the note-by-note song with brilliant structure, hitting body and spirit together.” –The Globe and Mail
“The touchstone of truth in a fictional world is a surprise. When the least expected things seem inevitable and contrived, the reader has shared the most generous of all seductions. Alissa York cares fiercely for the integrity of her characters and never intrudes herself upon them, or us. These are truly original stories, charged with the luminous detail which makes us see life afresh.” –Séan Virgo, author of A Traveller Came By