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The Book Shelf
dee was bitten by the “I want to write a book” bug after selling her Calgary restaurant, Foodsmith, in 1994. Her first book, Skinny Feasts, a cookbook – based on the food she served at Foodsmith – was published in 1997 by Whitecap Books, and became a national bestseller. In the intervening years, she has become a multi-disciplinary writer, producing books of poetry and essays, a novel, and short stories.
Reading books helps with cognition and empathy, and readers live longer than non-readers. Writing books helps dee understand the world… but sometimes it’s just about telling a good story!
Literary
Among The Untamed
(2023, Frontenac House)
By turns angry, powerful, visceral, evocative, and ultimately hopeful, this modern retelling of Joan of Arc in linked poems casts her as a prairie-born Jeanne Dark. In tough, tender lyrical language filled with imagery and magic, the protagonist explores sexual politics, feminism, gender identity, and how we make meaning of life.
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Danceland Diary
(Radiant Press, 2022)
Bread & Water
Essays
(U of R Press, 2021)
When chef and writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith left the city for rural life on a farm in Saskatchewan, she planned to replace cooking and teaching with poetry and prose, but—as begin the best stories—her next adventure didn’t quite work that way. These luscious essays use food to explore the hungers of the human soul: wilder hungers that loiter beyond cravings for love.
What Can’t Be Undone
Stories
(Thistledown Press, 2015)
These exquisitely crafted stories travel across the rolling prairies, unforgiving mountain ranges, and coastal highways of Western Canada, shining a light on the complexities of life. A chef, a former rodeo cowboy, a grieving playwright, a middle-aged man smitten with a young woman and horse-crazy teenage girls catapult into painful realizations of loss and change.
Wildness Rushing In
Poems
(Hagios Press, 2014)
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Foodshed
An Edible Alberta Alphabet
(TouchWood Editions, 2012)
“dee Hobsbawn-Smith does it all — award-winning poetry, essays, fiction, and journalism.”
~ Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf
Chapbooks
Jeanne Dark Comes of Age on the Prairie
(Espresso Chapbooks, summer 2019. An edition of 100 numbered copies. 5.5 x 8.5 in., 28 pages, hand sewn and bound, with french flaps)
Culinary
Shop Talk
The Open-All-Hours Insider’s Guide to Finding Great Ingredients in Calgary, the Bow Valley and Beyond
(Last Impression Publishing, 2008)
The Curious Cook At Home
Recipes & Secrets From An Adventurous Chef
(Whitecap, 2004)
The Quick Gourmet
(Whitecap, 2000)
Skinny Feasts
(Whitecap, 1997)
