Hunter, Catherine (Rose) 1957-

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Hunter, Catherine (Rose) 1957-

PERSONAL: Born 1957. Education: University of Winnipeg, B.A. (with honors); University of Victoria, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9, Canada.

CAREER: Poet, novelist, editor, critic, and educator. University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, associate professor of English and creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS: Manitoba Book of the Year award, for Latent Heat.

WRITINGS:

Necessary Crimes (poems), Blizzard (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1988.

Lunar Wake (poems), Turnstone Press (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1994.

Latent Heat (poems), Nuage (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1997.

Where Shadows Burn (mystery novel), Ravenstone (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 1999.

The Dead of Midnight (mystery novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.

In the First Early Days of My Death (novella), Signature Editions (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 2002.

(Editor) Exposed, Muses' Company (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 2002.

Also author of the spoken word CD Rush Hour. Contributor to books, including Paying Attention: Critical Essays on Timothy Findley, edited by Anne Geddes Bailey and Karen Grandy, ECW (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998; and to various journals and periodicals, including Prairie Fire, Journal of Mennonite Studies, Books in Canada, Contemporary Verse, and Malahat Review.

The Dead of Midnight has been translated into German.

SIDELIGHTS: Canadian author and educator Catherine Hunter has written both fiction and poetry. Her debut verse collection, Necessary Crimes, was released in 1988, and was followed six years later by Lunar Wake. In this second collection Hunter explores images and feelings that are close to her, delving into her home landscapes and personal experiences, and exploring feminine imagery and archetypes. Colin Morton, in a review for Books in Canada, observed that "pregnancy and motherhood feature importantly in the shape and rhythm of the book, her identification with the moon reaching one hundred percent in 'Hunter's Moon.'" Morton went on to remark that, through her poems, Hunter "does not shy away from writing an elegy or using the word 'I.' Hunter's third collection of poems, Latent Heat, received the Manitoba Book of the Year Award. Writing about this collection in NeWest Review, Richard Stevenson remarked: "What I love about the poetry is its sneakiness, its almost sidelong glance at what is significant and telling in our experience. Timing is everyhing here, and Hunter is a master of understatement."

Hunter published her first novel, Where Shadows Burn, in 1999. It is a thriller, and "it easily lives up to that description," noted Brenlee Carrington in the Winnipeg Free Press, terming the book "a dynamic first novel." Hunter's second novel, The Dead of Midnight, recounts the story of a book club that meets at the Mystery Au Lait Café in Winnipeg. Hunter's novel tells about what happens when the events that take place in the club's first five selections—all mystery novels by Walter White—suddenly begin to occur. Adding to the suspicious events is the fact that White himself also becomes something of a mystery, and the police are unable to locate him. Members of the book club are attacked, the first being Sarah Petursson, who, on top of everything else, finds herself coping with the death of her mother, poet Carolyn Yeats. When it becomes apparent that someone is after the late poet's papers, Sarah finds herself wondering whether all the mysterious events are related. A contributor to Publishers Weekly believed that The Dead of Midnight has "an enjoyably quirky cast of characters and an intriguing (though not totally fulfilled) premise." The reviewer went on to note that mystery fans would most likely solve the case ahead of the characters, but remarked that "Hunter handles her complex plot … with great skill." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews cited the frequent red herrings as well as the somewhat "clunky prose [and] manipulative plotting." However, Sue O'Brien, in a review for Booklist, referred to The Dead of Midnight as a "engrossing novel of psychological suspense" and called it "a natural for mystery book clubs."