Mark is a winner of Canada’s National Newspaper Award and a double recipient of the Mark Harrison Prize for excellence in journalism. On this page you’ll find links to a few of his writings that have not appeared in book form. Happy browsing!
Mark writes a column about words and language every two weeks in the books pages of the Montreal Gazette. To read a few of his columns, please go to: www.canada.com/montrealgazette/columnists/mark_abley.html
The September 2009 issue of The Walrus contains his article about Jack Kerouac and his Franco-American (or should that be French-Canadian?) roots. You can read it — along with a couple of intelligent comments — by going to: http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2009.09-literature-jack-kerouac-literary-mark-abley/
His travel article about the fragile, ecologically unique landscape south of Lake Athabasca in northern Saskatchewan appeared in the March 2009 issue of Canadian Geographic Travel. Here’s the online version: http://canadiangeographic.ca/travel/travel_magazine/mar09/athabasca_sand_dunes.asp
To read Mark’s take on Quebec City as written for a largely British audience, go to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2008/jun/09/canada.quebec
His feature article about the death of Marie Smith Jones, the last native speaker of the Eyak language, also appeared in the English newspaper The Guardian. Here is the link: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/28/usa.features11
His essay “All-Night Walker Sonata” was published in the American magazine World Literature Today in 2007. The article is available for purchase at www.amazon.com Anyone can see the opening paragraphs (and readers in the United States can gain free access to the whole article) at the following site: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-32853367_ITM
In 2006 the novelist Ian McGillis, an editor of Montreal Review of Books, interviewed Mark about his work. You can find the interview here: www.aelaq.org/mrb/feature.php?issue=18&article=537&cat=1
Mark’s article about the extraordinary manuscripts and ancient books in the library of Notre Dame College, located in the small town of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, appeared in The Walrus. You can read it by going to: www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2005.01-field-notes-Saskatchewan-history/
“The Verbs of Boro,” a chapter from his non-fiction book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, was reprinted by the online magazine Lost. You can find the chapter at: www.lostmag.com/issue4/verbs.php
Some years ago Mark inaugurated the series of “virtual chapbooks” on the website of Véhicule Press, an excellent literary publisher in Montreal. This link will take you to his essay “In a Cloud Forest”: www.vehiculepress.com/chapbook/abley/cover.html
