SoundCloud Listening Clip of Carm's dementia from The Grey Islands by John Steffler

The following listening clip from The Grey Islands by John Steffler is in the voice of Carm, narrated by Frank Holden.

Carm is an old man who lived on the Grey Islands into his presumed dementia and eventual removal to an institution. His stories haunt Steffler's main character, a mainlander seeking solitude.

The Grey Islands by John Steffler is published in print by Brick Books. The unabridged audio edition from Rattling Books, narrated by John Steffler, Frank Holden, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings, Janis Spence and Darryl Hopkins will be released in March, 2007.

Listening Clip for today's Canadian audiobook snack of the day: The Grey Islands

We invite you to listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' Canadian audiobook snack of the day, The Grey Islands by John Steffler:

Frank Holden performs a piece from The Grey Islands entitled Two More Women.

You can find other listening clip recordings from Rattling Books on SoundCloud.  Rattling Books publishes Canadian audiobooks.  Rattling Books is based in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Rattling Books On CBC's Weekend Arts Magazine

Click here to listen to WAM's interview with Rattling Books owner Janet Russell, and actor Frank Holden, narrator of Vikings of the Ice, Rattling Books' 2011 Audie contender.

Rattling Books' "Vikings Of The Ice" Up For Audie Award

Rattling Books is the only Canadian contender for a 2011 Audie, the audio book industry’s Oscar equivalent. Vikings of the Ice, RB's unabridged audio edition of George Allan England's 1922 eyewitness account of the Newfoundland seal hunt, is a finalist in the history category.

Presented annually by the Audio Publishers Association, an American organization representing audio publishing companies and allied suppliers, distributors and retailers of spoken word products, the Audies honour the best in audio books. Last year’s winners included Nelson Mandela’s Favourite African Folktales, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren, Don Cheadle and Alan Rickman, and Booker-prize winner Wolf Hall, narrated by Simon Slater.

Over 1,100 audio books were entered in this year’s competition. Winners will be announced at the Audies Gala on May 24, 2011, at the Times Center in New York City. (We've got our fingers, toes, arms, legs and hearts crossed.)

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Vikings is not only a chronicle of the early twentieth-century industrial seal hunt, but of the speech, folklore and beliefs of rural Newfoundlanders of that period. These long gone and never to return voices of the men who plied the spring seal fishery are rendered vividly by Frank Holden, veteran playwright, actor and narrator. Like Chaucer's pilgrims on the way to Canterbury, the "swilers" offer us their stories about a hard-scrabble life valiantly faced, on both land and sea.

Vikings of the Ice is available from Rattling Books as an MP3 audio book CD and an MP3 download.

Richard Cumyn And John Steffler Read At University of New Brunswick, February 7

Richard Cumyn and John Steffler will be reading at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John, on Monday, February 7, as part of the Lorenzo Reading Series. For details, click on the UNB photo.

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Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' audio edition of Richard Cumyn's short story "My Future in Insurance," narrated by Charlie Tomlinson. This story is available as an MP3 download, and it is also featured on EarLit Shorts 3 , an audio book collection of short fiction.

Follow this link to hear an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio edition of John Steffler's poetry collection The Grey Islands, narrated by the author, Frank Holden, Janis Spence, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl Hopkins.

Today In History . . .

On January 18, 1912, English explorer Robert F. Scott and his expedition reached the South Pole.
Exciting stuff, but there was one problem. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had gotten there before him.

If polar exploration is your thing, listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' The Last Voyage of the Karluk, Captain Robert Bartlett's account of being stranded in the far north during an early twentieth-century polar expedition. Narrated by Frank Holden, it's a spine-tingling story with many and various elements, including small children, dogs and Chopin's "Funeral March."


This unabridged audio book is available as an MP3 CD or an MP3 digital download.

Rattling Books publishes Canadian audiobooks from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Newfoundland's RCA Theatre Company Call For Submissions: Christmas Monologue Contest

The Resource Centre for the Arts Theatre Company is holding another round of its popular Christmas Monologue writing contest. The monologue must be about Christmas in Newfoundland – past, present or future – and run no more than five minutes.

The contest closes December 10, 2010, at 5pm. For more details, click on the image of "the Hall."

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Rattling Books has a fine selection of Newfoundland monologues. Listen to an excerpt from a Joel Thomas Hynes rant about provincial icons. Hear "Uncle Val" (Andy Jones) bemoan his lot in the suburbs of St. John's. Click here to listen to Frank Holden's Judge Daniel Woodley Prowse rail at both felons and plaintiffs in a nineteenth-century Newfoundland courtroom.

For these and other voices of Newfoundland and Labrador, visit the Rattling Books website. Our audio books are available as audio CDs or MP3 CDs, and as MP3 downloads.

Canadian audiobooks from Rattling Books in Newfoundland and Labrador

Canadian Poet John Steffler Reads The Plumber Poem

Canadian poet and novelist John Steffler, a native of Ontario, lived in Newfoundland for thirty years. The Grey Islands, Steffler’s collection of poetry written after a sojourn on an uninhabited island off the coast of Newfoundland, has been hailed as a masterpiece of Canadian wilderness writing.

Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio edition of The Grey Islands, read by the author, Frank Holden, Janis Spence, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl Hopkins. The Grey Islands is available from Rattling Books as an MP3 download and an audio CD.

Inside the Extra's Studio: a short film (comedy) by Gerard Neil starring Frank Holden and Gerard Neil viewable online

Inside the Extra's Studio (a spoof on the life of a professional extra) featuring Frank Holden as Jame Slipt-on and Gerard Neil as Ian Ernest is available for viewing online at undergroundfilm.com

Written, produced and edited by Gerard Neil. Directed and filmed by Gerard Neil and Ray Penton Jr. Technical coordinator and extras handler Rob Dawe. Executive Producer Ray Penton Jr.

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Frank Holden is a frequent contributor to Rattling Books. He created Judge Prowse Presiding, narrated The Last Voyage of the Karluk by Captain Bob Bartlett and also appears on The Grey Islands by John Steffler.

Gerard Neil also directed and acted (with Stephen Lush) in delirium, Blood from a Turnip, St. John’s NL, Canada 5 min (An exploration into the mind of a man freezing and starving to death.)

Legal Briefs

Who Is Judge Prowse?
from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

PROWSE, DANIEL WOODLEY, lawyer, politician, judge, historian, essayist, and office holder; b. 12 Sept. 1834 in Port de Grave, Nfld, fourth of the seven children of Robert Prowse and Jane Woodley; m. 13 July 1859 Sarah Anne Edleston Farrar in Sowerby, near Halifax, England, and they had three sons and three daughters; d. 27 Jan. 1914 in St John’s.

The Prowse family from which the inimitable judge and historian Daniel Woodley Prowse descended was of Devon origin, and the first member with a direct Newfoundland connection appears to have been Samuel Prowse of Torquay, a West Country trader, who married the eldest daughter of the Mudge family, also of Torquay and with old Newfoundland interests. Their son Robert came to the colony at the age of ten as an apprentice, married a daughter of Daniel Woodley of St Mary Church, Devon, and by the 1830s was in charge of the Conception Bay operations of the St John’s firm Brown, Hoyles and Company. The first four of their children were born in Port de Grave, a settlement of some 400 inhabitants. Acute economic conditions, not helped on occasion by sectarian divisions, created turbulence during these years, and in 1835 the Prowse house and premises were burnt to the ground, whereupon Robert moved with his family to St John’s. A versatile entrepreneur, he soon established under his name a firm that reached some prominence as a supplier to the Bank fishery and an exporter of fish, and in other ventures [...]

To read the rest of this dictionary entry, click here.

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The audio adaptation of Judge Prowse Presiding, a one-man play written and performed by Frank Holden, is available from Rattling Books.

Frank Holden Performs Judge Prowse Presiding in Trinity

Judge Prowse Presiding at Seasons in the Bight


Frank Holden will perform his one-man play, Judge Prowse Presiding, at the Seasons in the Bight theatre festival in Trinity, Newfoundland on the following dates:

Tuesday, June 26, 8pm
Wednesday, June 27, 8pm
Thursday, June 28, 8pm
Friday, June 29, 8pm

All performances are at the Parish Hall in Trinity, Newfoundland. Tickets are $20. For further information, please contact the box office at 1-888-464-3377 or consult Rising Tide Theatre's website.

Set somewhere in outport Newfoundland in the 1890's, written and first performed in the mid 1980's by Frank Holden, Judge Prowse Presiding brings a vital character and a near-forgotten frontier world back to life.

“A transfixing performance – simply enthralling.”
Edmonton Journal

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The audio adaptation of Judge Prowse Presiding, written and narrated by Frank Holden, is available from Rattling Books.