“Pinching Zwieback: Made-up Stories from the Darp”

Overview; Artistic Creed

I come to writing fiction from the storyteller’s places: the campfire, the backseat on a long drive, the bar stool.

Everyday people’s stories inspire me because they demonstrate how extraordinary every life is and allow us to recognize what unites and divides us. As editor, poet, and writer Judith Lawrence of Lambertville, NJ has suggested and what I strive for is, “A unique writer’s voice… the pure untarnished colloquial rawness in the reading. Having something to say… to be startled, drawn into the story, even if it’s in the stillness, or the lines between the lines of the work.*”

*https://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/2013/07/six-questions-for-judith-lawrence.html

Literary Indices

“Pinching Zwieback” is indexed here: Mennonite/s Writing in Canada Bibliography: https://mennonitebibs.wordpress.com/mennonite-s-writing-in-canada-bibliography/

Overall Summary

Nov 16, 2025: Mitchell Toews, since 2016, has been placed on 27 shortlist-longlist-finalist groupings in contests in the US, the UK, and Canada. In addition, Toews was nominated by Pulp Literature for the 2025 Writers’ Trust McClelland Stewart JOURNEY PRIZE for his story “All Our Swains Commend Her” and has received four PUSHCART PRIZE nominations, from three separate periodicals (two in Canada, one in the US).

Pinching Zwieback: A McNally Robinson Bookseller “BEST BOOKS OF THE SEASON” selection, a staff pick, and a multi-week Manitoba bestselling paperback fiction book. #6 across CANADA in January 2024 on the Hamilton Review of Books Indie Bestseller list!

Pinching Zwieback: the Winnipeg Free Press Book Club selection for November 2024. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/book-club?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwyo60BhBiEiwAHmVLJejsiQ1BSxLcUz1km7UP6BI0ggBeBSJNMegjokTfgxfsgxNBemh5ghoCA4cQAvD_BwE

Mitchell Toews: Miramichi Reader’s “Why I Wrote This Book” feature. https://miramichireader.ca/2024/08/why-i-wrote-this-book-issue-33/

Reviews, Launches, Interviews, and Excerpts

Prairie Books NOW Synopsis: Fall/Winter 2023 “These stories portray small-town Mennonite life with humour and poignancy. Linked by a common community and recurrent characters, the stories show families reconfiguring as necessary, young boys growing to be men, and women learning to be bold in the
midst of tight societal expectations.” (At Bay Press, $24.95 pb, 400 pages, isbn: 978-1-998779-05-5)

Free Press Book Club Synopsis: November 19, 2024 “In the 20 linked stories Toews has created, characters pop in and out, are introduced and then briefly forgotten, re-emerging later in the book in a different stage of life, bringing new voices in the form of kids and grandkids along with them... Though these stories are ‘made up from the darp,’ as Toews says, Pinching Zwieback reads like a memoir; the characters Toews has developed feel full, real and relatable.”—Ben Sigurdson, Winnipeg Free Press Literary Editor https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/2024/11/09/mennonite-manitoba-stories-on-tap-for-free-press-book-club

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review Dec 30, 2023 https://www.WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/2023/12/30/chekhov-of-the-darp “a stunner…”

“Why I Wrote This Book” feature in The Miramichi Review, August 4, 2024 https://miramichireader.ca/2024/08/why-i-wrote-this-book-issue-33/ “Like most authors, I had numerous reasons to write my book. Legacy, heritage, tell my story my way, and so on. Valid reasons. I had these plus some ulterior motivation…”

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review/Author Interview June 13, 2024 (Jake Epp Public Library, Steinbach, MB) https://steinbachonline.com/articles/local-authors-debut-book-strikes-global-chord-with-relatable-tales- “Local author’s debut book strikes global chord…”

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review Nov 22, 2023 https://anabaptistworld.org/new-books-for-2023-fiction-books/ “a collection of stories of practical folk discerning across generations what should remain and what should be let go…”

“Pinching Zwieback” story selected as a Mentor Text for the Moving Writers website, a US/Ca site for English teachers, by English teachers. The story Fall from Grace was chosen March 20, 2024 for its strength in illustrating how to: “establish a setting… create a voice… tell one great story… and include a moral to the story.” https://movingwriters.org/2024/03/20/mentor-text-wednesday-fall-from-grace/ “Even if you only give your writers the first two paragraphs of this story, you’re giving them a great mentor text for establishing a setting. Those paragraphs do more than establish the sense of place, but they give a very visceral sense of what it means for the narrator to be in that place. Using the imagery of the first paragraph, and the rules and conditions of the second, we are placed in the youth of the narrator.”

Hollay Ghadery: Rural Writer Spotlight Author Interview Jan 6, 2024 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/oSqzqKJAvXp9KvQm/?mibextid=oFDknk “My focus has been prairie stories. My forthcoming work (a novel, set in Winnipeg and for the majority of the book, in the Canadian boreal wilderness near the 50th parallel) continues in that place so clear to me but also draws into other resonant locations, including Winnipeg, the boreal shield in Manitoba and urban characters and scenes from southwestern British Columbia. I am most often described as a storyteller with grit and I wear that tag with pride.”

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review  Dec 20, 2023 https://www.literaryheist.com/articles/stories-from-the-darp/ “Toews has the gift of making other people seen and heard…”

Author Interview Dec 7, 2023 https://winklermordenvoice.ca/services/download.ashx?doc=WinklerVoice120723.pdf “real-life feelings, characters, and places...”

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review Dec 5, 2023 https://themeanderer.ca/pinching-zwieback-a-review/ “The stories whisper words of wisdom…”

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review Dec 5, 2023 https://bit.ly/GNormanREVIEW_PZ “gritty realism in his characters and a profoundly human strength in his storylines…”

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Review Nov, 2023 https://maryloudriedger2.wordpress.com/2023/11/28/pinching-zwieback/ “poignant, evocative, touching, humorous and heart-wrenching…”

“Pinching Zwieback” Excerpt Nov 27, 2023 https://www.mennotoba.com/excerpt-from-pinching-zwieback-by-mitchell-toews/ 

“Pinching Zwieback” Book Launch/Reading Nov 8, 2023 https://www.youtube.com/live/49xiY1jRSYs “stories filled with life, filled with vitality—written by a storyteller…”

Author Interview Jan 6, 2023 https://www.pressenza.com/2023/06/i-used-to-be-an-animal-lover-conversation-rhys-barbara-mitchell-part-i/ “I strive to ‘ambush’ difficult or inflated personal memories by letting my characters take the story and reshape it…”

Author Interview Feb 14, 2021 https://literallystories2014.com/2021/02/14/literally-reruns-so-are-they-all-by-mitchell-toews/ “a gentle yet unsentimental touch…”

Author Interview Jan 28, 2021 https://www.blankspaces.ca/coffee-chats/coffee-chat-with-mitchell-toews “a quotidian setting, rich descriptions, relatable characters, human strengths and weaknesses on display, sorrow offset with quiet, cathartic humour…”

Author Interview Dec 19, 2019 https://mysmallpresswritingday.blogspot.com/2019/12/mitchell-toews-my-writing-day-and-offer.html “Utter cockwash…” 🙂

Author Interview Nov 14, 2018 https://www.mennotoba.com/mennonite-memes-like-our-food-make-for-a-rich-diet-5-questions-with-author-mitch-toews/ “I was born here and Steinbach and the Mennonite Borscht Belt are a hovering omnipresence in many of my stories…”

Commentary

Armin Wiebe 

• Mitchell Toews’ stories range from Tom Sawyer-like tales of boyhood squabbles to the heartbreak of family dysfunction to the cruelty of small-town hypocrisy. Hilarious and tragic in turn, Toews explores facets of Mennonite life that other Mennonite writers have not touched. 

• Mitchell Toews’ stories add more layers to the world that has given us Patrick Friesen, Lynnette (Dueck) D’anna, Miriam Toews, and Andrew Unger. Racism, class conflict, and economic and religious snobbery form the background for the sometimes comic, sometimes excruciating human dramas experienced by four generations of the Zehen family. 

• With a family bakery at the heart of what links them, these are hockey and baseball stories, love stories, drinking stories, father-son stories, mother-daughter stories, outsider stories, getting even stories, in which characters face high stakes perils, sometimes emotional, sometimes physical, sometimes life and death menacing. 

• From 1874 Russia to 21st century Manitoba and British Columbia, Mitchell Toews’ linked stories present us with a boisterous and poignant family saga unlike any other in Mennonite literature.

• Oba Jung, (“Oh, but son,”) you write good stories. 

—Armin Wiebe, author of The Salvation of Yasch Siemens and Grandmother, and playwright of several productions, including The Recipe, Winnipeg, MB Laughing. http://www.arminwiebe.ca/

Donna Besel

Mitch’s debut collection of short stories, “Pinching Zwieback,” recently received a stellar review in the Winnipeg Free Press and has appeared several times on McNally Robinson Bookstore’s bestseller list for paperback fiction. His book plays homage to the Mennonite language, food, history, and culture but he does not shy away from sharp insights into the limitations of a closed and controlled way of life. Like well-known Manitoba writer Miriam Toews, his writing often explores the clashes of their shared Mennonite background.

—Donna Besel, Lac du Bonnet, MB is a writer and educator, author of Lessons from a Nude Man, and The Unravelling.

Ralph Friesen

Mitch Toews speaks from the margins of small-town society, claiming a space for the underdog and the undervalued. His characters must go through all manner of tests and challenges, but in the end–love wins. Toews has that rare talent for touching your heart and being funny, too.  

—Ralph Friesen of Victoria, BC, author of Between Earth & Sky: Steinbach’s First 50 Years Dad, God, and Me and, most recently, Prosperity Ever Depression Never: Steinbach in the 1930s” https://www.ralphfriesen.com/

Linda Rogers Van Krugel

[…] That is the substance of Pinching Zwieback, rhymes with Steinbach, the town of Toews’ awakening. The linked stories in this premier collection from a senior writer describe the apostate Christian community he is growing into and out of now that the skin he was born in no longer fits. This was always true for the narrators born as outsiders in an outsider religion.

—Linda Rogers, Victoria, BC from her full review of the book. Canadian poet, author, thinker, feminist, and raconteur extraordinaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda Rogers

Zilla Jones

Imbued with the turbulence of an ancestral river, the joy of a toboggan careening down an icy run, and the despair of dreams broken on a distant hockey rink, Mitchell Toews’ stories ask universal questions, about belonging, conforming and dissenting, all the while rooted in the snowdrifts and sun-drenched fields of a small prairie town. The answers emerge hot from the oven, fragrant like the zwieback buns of the title: we find ourselves in our family, and memories, and forgiveness, as familiar and soothing as the worn leather of a much-loved baseball glove.

“. . . ostensibly Mennonite, but the themes of conformity vs dissension, individual vs family, belonging vs alienation are universal.” (Facebook)

—Zilla Jones, Winnipeg, MB, Journey Prize winner and finalist in the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award https://www.transatlanticagency.com/2021/08/27/welcoming-zilla-jones-to-transatlantic/

Alanna Rusnak

Moves like a tide through visceral daily experiences—quintessentially Canadian, some heart wrenching, each powerfully evocative.

—Alanna Rusnak, Blank Spaces Magazine, Ontario https://www.chickenhousepress.ca/arp

Leslie Wakeman

His stories allow us to hold space for challenging our notions on life.

—Leslie Wakeman, writer and educator, Lac du Bonnet, Mb

Rachael Friesen

“I just finished reading the book and absolutely loved it. The snapshots from each character and how the stories flow from one generation to the next were fantastic. Diedrich and Matt were my favourite stories to follow, I cannot wait to purchase a copy for our branch!”

—Rachael Friesen, South Central Regional Library, Altona Branch Administrator

Sue Sorensen

In comments made during her hosting of the Nov 8 book launch event at McNally Robinson Booksellers, Wpg., MB: “. . . stories filled with life, filled with vitality. . . written by a storyteller.”

—Sue Sorensen, author, editor, and Associate Professor of English at Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, MB.

Dianne Pearce

“If you enjoyed Mitch’s contribution, “Angel Delorme and the Craigflower Bus” in the Hawkshaw Press anthology, HARD-BOILED AND LOADED WITH SIN, then you’re going to love THIS book!”

—Dianne Pearce, MA, MFA, Publisher-Editor, Montclair, CA

Former South East Manitoba Residents

“You’ve created such a feel for that town (whether one has lived there or not), for the kinds of characters who live in these places. For me, personally, some of the events are deeply resonant. You’ve caught them well. The things young boys do, the way they think. You’ve caught it.”

—Anonymous Victoria Reader

[…] “I just had to write this instant cuz I just finished reading Willa Hund from your book. . . So funny and heartbreaking and alive!! I’m reading the whole book but that’s the one I just read now. . . ”

—Anonymous Toronto Reader

”IT’S ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS!”

—Anonymous Toronto Reader’s Mom

“Even before I started with the stories, I read the “Wuatsiel…Glossary” at the back of your book. That itself is worth the price of the book.  I was surprised how many of the words I knew by simply pronouncing them phonetically. Some things did survive my childhood. . .”

—Reader Eric Peters

“My favourite word: ‘rutsch‘ (p. 52). I know very little Low German, but that word was INSTANTLY recognizable . . . My favourite phrase (p. 140): ‘their visions so sympathetic, symphonic and kind.’ . . . such literary creativity (including some alliteration) and emotional openness and depth . . . My favourite paragraph (the final paragraph on p. 149): ‘I stood at the table, facing her. She tucked the phone under her chin and after listening for a few seconds gave me a comically enthusiastic two-thumbs-up salute and a smile as bright as a silver dollar. In that instant, looking at my mother’s often severe countenance and her small angular body, I felt safe and secure in her presence—no matter what threat might come. I saw her bravery and the utter dedication to her family, regardless of how she managed it and what people might think.'”

—Reader Gerald Loewen

Purchase from: At Bay Press McNally Robinson Booksellers Mennonite Heritage Village Museum Mennonite Heritage Museum CommonWord Misty River Books and every online seller from here to the banks of the Bazavluk and back.