Harry Thurston
Biography
Born in 1950 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Harry Thurston has lived most of his life in the province of his birth. However, as an essayist, editor and freelance journalist, Thurston has traveled the globe, writing articles for more than thirty publications, including National Geographic, Audubon, and Harrowsmith. The majority of his non-fiction work deals with matters of the environment and natural history and he has an educational background that reflects this fact as he graduated in 1971 with a B.Sc. in Biology from Acadia University. Some of the highlights of Thurston’s career as a naturalist include being awarded the 1983 National Magazine Award for Science & Technology and the 1986 and 1987 Canadian Science Writer’s Association’s Science & Society Award. More recently, Thurston’s A Place Between the Tides: A Naturalist’s Reflections on the Salt Marsh (2005) was shortlisted for the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, the B.C. Award for Canadian Non-fiction, the City of Dartmouth Book Award and won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. In addition to publishing books and articles on nature, Thurston served as a contributing editor to Equinox magazine since it began in 1981. Thurston’s career as a naturalist and journalist, however, is only half the story. In addition to his journalistic endeavors, Thurston has published widely as a poet. His first collection, Barefaced Stone, was published in 1980 by Fiddlehead Poetry Books. Before the release of this collection, however, Thurston established himself on the Atlantic-Canadian literary scene as the editor and publisher of the literary journal Germination. Since Barefaced Stone, Thurston has published a number of other collections of poetry, including A Ship Portrait (2005), which details the life and times of John O’Brien, a nineteenth-century Nova Scotian painter of ships. He has also edited The Sea’s Voice: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Nature Writing (2005).
Bibliography
- Barefaced Stone. Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1980.
- Clouds Flying Before the Eye. Fredericton: Fiddlehead Poetry Books: Goose Lane Editions, 1985.
- co-author with Kerry Geddes and Jeremy J Simms. Exploring Change: People and Places. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre Educational, 1989.
- Tidal Life: A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy. Camden East: Camden House Publishing, 1990.
- Atlantic Outposts. Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 1990.
- co-author with Wayne Barrett. Against Darkness and Storm: Lighthouses of the Northeast. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1993.
- Dawning of the Dinosaurs: The Story of Canada's Oldest Dinosaurs. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1994.
- World of the Shorebirds. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996.
- A Wilderness of Sea: Safeguarding Canada's Oceans and Great Lakes with Protected Areas. Toronto: World Wildlife Fund, 1997.
- co-author with Wayne Barrett. Atlantic Canada Nature Guide. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1998.
- co-author with Wayne Barrett and Anne MacKay. Building the Bridge to P.E.I.. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 1998.
- The World of the Hummingbird. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1999.
- The Nature of Hummingbirds: Rainbows on Wings. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1999.
- If Men Lived on Earth. Wolfville: Gaspereau Press, 2000.
- The Sea Among the Rocks: Travels in Atlantic Canada. East Lawrencetown: Pottersfield Press, 2002.
- Island of the Blessed: The Secrets of Egypt's Everlasting Oasis. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003.
- A Place Between the Tides: A Naturalist's Reflections on the Salt Marsh. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2004.
- Secrets of the Sands: The Revelations of Egypt's Everlasting Oasis. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2004.
- A Ship Portrait. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2005.
- The Sea's Voice: An Anthology of Atlantic Canadian Nature Writing. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2005.
- Broken Vessel: Thirty-five Days in the Desert. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2007.
- Silver Ghost (with photographs by Thaddeus Holownia). Sackville: Anchorage Press, 2008.
- Animals of My Own Kind: New & Selected Poems. Montreal: Vehicule Press, 2009.
- The Atlantic Coast: A Natural History. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2011.
Critical Sources
- Balzer, David. "Capsizing Vessels." Rev. of A Ship Portrait, by Harry Thurston. Books in Canada 35.4 (2006): 31-32.
- Campbell, Wanda. "'Every Sea-Surrounded Hour': The Margin in Maritime Poetry." Studies in Canadian Literature 33.2 (2008): 151-70.
- LaRocque, Lance. "Breathing Books, Deranged Bodies: Reading and Writing Landscapes in the Poetry of Harry Thurston." Isle: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 10.1 (2003): 115-35.
- Thorpe, Michael. "Nature vs. Nurture: Two Atlantic Poets Memorialize Lost Relations." Atlantic Books Today 28 (2000): 16.
- Wilson, John. Rev. of Island of the Blessed: The Secrets of Egypt’s Everlasting Oasis, by Harry Thurston. Quill & Quire 69.3 (2003): 49.