The unusually bookish JoAnn McCaig writes, edits, teaches, reviews, talks about, publishes, and sells books.

Join in the conversation about reading and writing, books and films, literature and culture.

Check out JoAnn’s new novel

Your Title Goes Here

❝An immensely gutsy novel that works to both undermine and expand its own story through an entertaining and teasing literary puzzle…. This is an intelligent and, especially, a brilliantly written novel.❞

— Sharon Butala

Stories nest inside stories in this very bookish novel about the writerly process and about the places where literary ambition collides with erotic desire.

❝An immensely gutsy novel that works to both undermine and expand its own story through an entertaining and teasing literary puzzle… This is an intelligent and, especially, a brilliantly written novel.❞

— Sharon Butala

Stories nest inside stories in this very bookish novel about the writerly process and about the places where literary ambition collides with erotic desire.

Check out JoAnn’s new novel

JoAnn McCaig

Meet JoAnn

Over the course of her working life, JoAnn McCaig has become an established literary authority in Western Canada. She began her writing career as an ad copywriter, and eventually earned three degrees in English literature. In her 20 years of teaching English at the University of Calgary, JoAnn ensured that hundreds of students not only overcame their fear of poetry, but also learned how to use the semicolon correctly. JoAnn published her first novel in 2000, and in 2007 became a founding board member of Calgary literary press Freehand Books. In 2010 she realized a lifelong dream by opening Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in Calgary’s inner city Beltline area, thereby making the circle of bookishness complete.

Thoughts on a very bookish life

“I like to involve the reader in the making of meaning, rather than handing the reader a story in a neat little package.”

I’ve been a book nerd all my life, from my earliest memories of snuggling with my mom and brother to hear the latest adventures of The Bobbsey Twins. In elementary school, I loved to find library books about historical figures like Lady Jane Grey and Spain’s Little Infanta, and I started high school in the late 60s with a copy of a Hemingway biography under my arm. In grade 11 psych class, I chose to read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment for an essay assignment on conscience.

My university years were devoted to the study and teaching of English literature. I taught English as a sessional lecturer for twenty years, and the course I enjoyed most was the historical survey class for honours and majors students, affectionately known as ‘From Beowulf to Virginia Woolf.’ When my kids were young, it was not unusual to have their viewing of the Simpsons interrupted by me yelling over the kitchen counter, “Did you catch that reference to King Lear?”

For me, having a role in introducing students to the wondrous language of Shakespeare and Keats, to the power and drama of the Brontes and Faulkner, to the visionary genius of Blake and Atwood, is a joy and a privilege. In my own work, I tend to create the kind of complex, layered structures I enjoy reading – like Swann: A Mystery by Carol Shields, or Joshua Then and Now by Mordecai Richler, or Life After Life by Kate Atkinson.

— JoAnn McCaig

In the News

You Look Good for Your Age - Anthology

My essay “My Mother’s Madness” was published in the anthology Don’t Tell: Family Secrets, from Demeter Press

You Look Good for Your Age - Anthology

You Look Good for Your Age

I’m pleased and proud to have my essay “Mastery of the Instrument” included in this fine anthology.

Shelf Life Books is hosting the online launch on May 27th.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal Recipients Announced

The Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal is a commemorative medal in honour of the 70th anniversary of Her late Majesty’s accession to the Throne as Queen of Canada. The medal is being awarded to 7,000 Albertans throughout 2022 in recognition of significant contributions to the province.

read more

Book Reviews

Forest Green book cover

Forest Green

I vaguely remembered Kate Pullinger’s name as the surprise winner of the GG for fiction a few years back, with a historical novel called ‘The Mistress of Nothing’. The blurb for her new novel ‘Forest Green’ didn’t really grab me at first, but now in late summer, with the book pile thinning, I thought I’d give this story set in the Depression-era Okanagan a try.

The Spinster Diaries \ Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life

Comic Novels for Summer

They say that summer is the time for light reading. If light means mindless or predictable, no thanks. But if light means comic, then I’m in. Here are two comic novels I thoroughly enjoyed this summer.

Girl, Woman, Other

Girl, Woman, Other

Each of the first four chapters of Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other tells the stories of three black British women whose lives are connected in different ways.

Mitz book cover

Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury

A lot of fine readers I know really liked Vanessa and Her Sister, a fictional recreation of the lives of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. But I resisted it, for some reason. I often dislike fictionalized biographies of my literary heroes – though David Lodge’s efforts in that genre are exceptional. However, when tidying shelves in the store during the Christmas rush, I stumbled upon a new title by an author I love, Sigrid Nunez.

Five Wives by Joan Thomas - book cover

Five Wives

I hardly know what to say about Five Wives. I didn’t love it, I didn’t enjoy it, but I certainly admired it. What a magic trick Thomas pulls off here!

Go Went Gone book cover

Go, Went, Gone

In this beautiful novel, translated from the German, Richard is a retired and widowed Classics professor whose narrow existence is forever changed by his encounter with North African refugees stranded in Berlin.

Disoriental by Negar Djavadi

Disoriental

The title of this novel is a deft play on words: in this story of an Iranian dissident family forced into exile in Paris in 1981 after the Islamist revolution, Kimia Sadr is not only separated from her “oriental” identity, but she, and her whole family, are “disoriented” by the loss of all that is familiar and by the strangeness of a new language and culture…

There There, by Tommy Orange

There There

Perhaps this novel of urban indigenous life in Oakland falls into the category of what James Baldwin calls the “protest novel” – less a literary work than a “catalogue of violence”. Certainly the fraught life stories of the different characters in the first half of the book are bleak, violent and sad. When the characters gather at a powwow, the suffering and chaos that result seem inevitable. For me, Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water and Medicine River , and Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce do a much more nuanced job of telling the story of indigenous peoples in the modern world.

Midwinter Break, by Bernard MacLaverty

Midwinter Break

A finely observed moment in the lives of a long married Irish couple, each with secret yearnings.

Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock

Here I Am!

This is a delightful read. Our host on a transatlantic sea voyage is Frankie, an autistic six year old who has stowed away on the ship after the death of his mother. Holdstock does a marvelous job of taking the reader inside Frankie’s strange and scary and wonderful world.

The Porpoise, by Mark Haddon

The Porpoise

The story starts in the present with a pretty icky family situation then plunges into the mythological ancient world with a brief sidetrack to Shakespearean London. It took me a while to get into this novel by the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, but once I did, I was totally entranced, hooked and reeled right in. Immensely powerful, dramatic and satisfying.

The Overstory, book by Richard Powers

The Overstory

If you read this novel properly, it will change your life…

The Shakespeare Requirement, by Julie Schumacher

The Shakespeare Requirement

Julie Schumacher brings back Jason Fitger, the hapless academic hero of Dear Committee Members.

Normal People, by Sally Rooney

Normal People

All the hype is dead on. This novel and this writer are extraordinary.

From the blog

WRITING | RANTING | RUMINATING

Audio Books:  Narration

Audio Books: Narration

Though there probably are exceptions, I think that the worst thing an author can do is to read his/her own work. In almost every case, this is a very bad idea.

The Dumb Down Part 2: Purple Prose

The Dumb Down Part 2: Purple Prose

I truly expected more from the estimable Francine Prose, whose New Yorker pieces exemplify intellectual rigour and a lively feminism.  (Witness her commentary on the bizarre cancellation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s upcoming novel due to the fear of upsetting certain people.)

My Pandemic in Middlemarch

My Pandemic in Middlemarch

Lately I’ve been getting a little irritated at Facebook boastings about all the great and lofty things that people are accomplishing in these COVID days. The ten best lists that highlight a person’s erudition or sophistication, for one thing. So announcing that I have been using this time of self isolation to finally tackle the greatest novel in English risks sounding like a boast. If so, I humbly apologize.

JoAnn’s Published Work

An Honest Woman

Stories nest inside stories in this very bookish novel about the writerly process and about the places where literary ambition collides with erotic desire.

You Look Good For Your Age

I’m pleased and proud to have my essay “Mastery of the Instrument” included in this fine anthology. Join us at Shelf Life Books for the online launch on May 27.

A Literary Life

Co-owner
Shelf Life Books

Since 2010

Book Reviewer &
Literary Authority
CBC Radio, 
Alberta Views

Writer’s Union
Member

Since 2001

Board Member
Broadview Press 

2007 -2019

Doctor of Philosophy
University of Calgary

1996

Master of Arts
University of Calgary

1989 

Bachelor of Arts
University of Victoria

1983

Adjunct Professor
St. Mary’s University

2004-2005

Sessional Lecturer
Department of English
University of Calgary

1989 – 2009

My Mother’s Madness
Essay pulished in the anthology Don’t Tell: Family Secrets, from Demeter Press

January 2023

 An Honest Woman
Thistledown Press

2019 

Reading In: Alice Munro’s Archive
Wilfred Laurier University Press

2002

Reading In

Adopted as a course text in
grad courses in
Library Science and
Cultural Studies
Owner
Freehand Books

2016 to 2020

Founding Board Member
Freehand Books

2007

Received the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal for service to the writing community

December 2022

Winner of the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize

for The Textbook of the Rose:
A Tale

2001

Shortlisted for the Georges Bugnet Award

for The Textbook of the Rose: A Tale

2001 

The Textbook of the Rose: A Tale
Cormorant Books

2000

Recent Event Highlights

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MEDIA

A Review of An Honest Woman
Article from Freefall Magazine

> read article

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MEDIA
A Review of An Honest Woman
Article from Alberta Views

> read article
> view pdf

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MEDIA

Writers Who Retail: A Reality Check
Article from Write

> read article
> view pdf

EVENT

May 27 – Online launch of the new anthology You Look Good for Your Age at Shelf Life Books.

> event details

MEDIA
Interview with Shelagh Rogers in The Next Chapter’s bookstore segment,
CBC Radio One

> Listen

MEDIA

Interview with Eric Volmers
Calgary Herald

> read interview
> view pdf

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MEDIA

Interview with Russell Bowers on Daybreak Alberta
CBC Radio One

> Listen

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MEDIA

JoAnn McCaig sells Calgary-based Freehand Books, purchases Saskatoon’s Thistledown Press
Article from the Calgary Herald

>read article

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MEDIA

SaskBooks Reviews
Book Review 
> read review

Get in touch

Shelf Life Books

shelflifebooks.ca
1302 4 Street SW
Calgary, AB
(403) 265-1033

Thistledown Press

thistledownpress.com
P.O.Box 30105 Westview
Saskatoon, Sk  S7L 7M6
306-244-1722

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