‘They didn’t like the fact that an outsider was writing about it. Proulx was born in Connecticut, grew up in Maine, and lived for thirty years in Vermont, before moving to Wyoming.

This angered many Newfoundlanders when the book was published. Still without spoilers, The Gammy Bird, for example, has a dedicated sexual abuse reporter. The Shipping News covers many unsavoury topics. ‘I don’t think I’d been on the island for seven or eight minutes when I was just struck viscerally. Annie Proulx has described her own first visit to Newfoundland as having a profound impact: There, he raises his two little girls, and works as a reporter covering the shipping news for the local newspaper, The Gammy Bird. Through happenstance, he leaves New York to return to his ancestral home place in Newfoundland, despite never having been before. He’s only ever referred to by this, his surname. The story centres on the life and times of a widower named ‘Quoyle’. The book is set in Newfoundland – pronounced Newf’n-LAND – the island off eastern Canada.

For now, let’s stick with The Shipping News, without any major spoilers. How did I meet her? Where did this happen? We’ll come to that. I only know it spells her name because I stood at her elbow as she wielded her Biro. Her handwriting is so tiny, it’s almost indecipherable. My most prized copies, however, are the ones with her incy-wincy handwritten signature on the inside pages. As an older writer myself, this gives me indescribable comfort.Īnnie Proulx has published a great many books since then, all of which I display with pride in my bookcase. Her first novel, Postcards, was published in 1991, following a long writing apprenticeship. It was Annie Proulx’s second published novel. When The Shipping News was first published in 1993, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award, and the Irish Times International Prize. National Emerging Writer Programme Overview.

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