NEWS & EVENTS

Featured Q & A 
with River Street Review

Bruce Hunter’s award-winning novel In the Bear’s House was recently reissued by Frontenac House and translated into Italian as Nella casa dell’orso by iQdB Edizioni. In a special feature for the May 2025 issue of River Street Review, Bruce reflected on what this milestone has meant to him.

Q: What has it been like to reissue In the Bear’s House and have it translated?A: As a mature writer on the eve of his 73rd birthday on May 21, I’m gobsmacked to have  in my hands an Italian translation by iQdB eidizioni, and a sparkling new edition by Calgary’s Frontenac House. What a validation of my life’s work. Which I hope is an inspiration to all writers, young and old. To borrow a baseball metaphor, it’s all about staying in the game, whether you strike out or not, and keep getting up to bat. 

Both publishers lavished such love on their books, inside and out. Both books radiate that level of professionalism and care.

​

I first published In the Bear’s House in 2009. It sold well and won an award at the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival where it was deemed a mountain classic. But the publisher disappeared as did my edited galleys. I gave up all hope of ever seeing it in print again. Then my neighbor, the gifted poet and editor, Elana Wolff read It. It speaks to our times, she said. You must get it out there.

​

A cousin in IT scanned the hard copy and created a new submissible file. I showed it to the brilliant editor Micheline Maylor-Kovitz at Frontenac House in Calgary who took it to her bosses. There, Micheline, Terry Davies, and Neil Pretunia helped me take In the Bear’s House to a whole new level.

​

In the meantime, my Italian publisher brought out a translation as Nella casa dell’orso (literally, ln the House of the Bear). In April, I did a four-city tour to Lecce, Copertino, Florence, and Trieste, where the audiences’ enthusiastic response showed the story of a creative young mother and her deafened son in 1960s Alberta transcends time, language, and culture.

​

I look forward to the Calgary launch on May 23. What a birthday gift. From the bottom of my mended heart, gratitude to every one of you who got me here. 

​

-River Street Review, May 2025