Market Copy—Metaphor in the Making

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

The wheels of literature turn slowly, but they produce without rest, grinding out the vast quantity of grist, meal, and fine flour that create the broad imaginative canon that is Canadian fiction.

My personal grindstones have turned out plenty of words—maybe even more than I ever thought I would create. My milestone map looks something like this:

Early Submissions to literary periodicals, anthologies, and contests, Jan/2016-Oct/2023. I began submitting in 2015; however, I was not a Duotrope subscriber until August 28, 2015, so I don’t have accurate submission records for that period, except that my acceptances were zero. 2016-2023, I submitted 501 stories, essays, and interviews with 121 acceptances. Note: Duotrope does not record stats for every market I submitted to, so the submission totals are lower than the actual number sent. I used actual acceptance numbers.

Launch of Debut Collection, Pinching Zwieback “Made-up Stories from the Darp” Oct/2023-Present. With a book out, I continued to submit work for publication in periodicals, etc, but also spent time at launches, other literary events, and Open Mics. I made 123 submissions, with 21 acceptances, and attended 45 in-person events. I’ve had the honour of receiving four Pushcart Prize nominations in the years since I began my imaginative writing life in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry.

Launch of Debut Novel, Mulholland and Hardbar (At Bay Press) Spring 2026. Having another book forthcoming with my wonderful publisher, At Bay Press, I will once again shift gears in my writing practice. I still hope to maintain a steady stream of short story submissions, so 2026 is sure to be an interesting and busy year.

Mulholland and Hardbar: “Like ‘Fargo’ with a Low German accent, Mulholland and Hardbar follows the four seasons in the boreal: friendship, mistrust, deceit, and violence.”

Here’s an IDEA BOARD look at some of the market copy drafted to date concerning my career and including my short story publication work and Pinching Zwieback. New work, including as-yet unpublished short stories, flash fiction, verse and the 2026 novel will inform these sketchbook ideas with more detail.

Mitchell Toews – Author Profile & Literary Positioning

“One chair, one cracked teacup, one quiet sigh”

Overview:
Mitchell Toews is a seasoned Canadian writer whose stories explore the human experience through the lens of Mennonite life, small-town society, and intergenerational dynamics. Across his work—from Pinching Zwieback to his periodical publications—Toews blends humour, pathos, and cultural insight, offering a layered portrayal of community, identity, and moral complexity. His work is distinguished by its balance of comic observation, emotional resonance, and attention to social hierarchies, family dynamics, and the struggles of outsiders within tightly knit communities.

Themes & Motifs:

  • Coming-of-age & growth: Stories frequently track male protagonists (such as Matt, Lenny, & Diedrich in Pinching Zwieback) navigating the transition from boyhood into adulthood, then into grandparenthood, exploring moral, emotional, and cultural challenges. This trend continues in his upcoming Bildungsroman novel, Mulholland and Hardbar.
  • Cultural heritage & outsider perspective: A recurring focus on Mennonite traditions, language (including Low German), and religious hierarchies, showing both the richness and constraints of cultural identity.
  • Family & community dynamics: Examines intergenerational relationships, the role of women as moral and cultural anchors, and the tension between individual agency and societal expectation.
  • Humour & pathos: Humour often arises from the clash between expectation and reality, offering relief and insight while maintaining the gravity of cultural, ethical, and emotional stakes.
  • Power & agency: Stories explore institutionalized hierarchies, gender roles, and moral courage, often highlighting the overlooked strength of women, the in-between world of children, and the ethical struggles of men.
  • Symbolism & recurring motifs: Bread-making, baseball, and local traditions serve as metaphors for growth, resilience, and cultural continuity.

Style & Technique:

  • Short stories: Each story functions as a “micro-battle” against expectation, building toward broader narrative and thematic arcs.
  • Narrative voice: Experienced, reflective, often balancing insider knowledge with a playful, empathetic eye.
  • Language play: Incorporates Low German and cultural vernaculars to enrich authenticity, convey identity tension, and provide a foreground for the politics of language.
  • Emotional layering: Combines intimate, personal observation with social commentary; uses juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy, physical risk with moral choice.

Critical Highlights (Summarized):

  • Armin Wiebe: Toews explores facets of Mennonite life others avoid; combines comedy and tragedy; portrays multi-generational sagas with depth.
  • Donna Besel: Gives sharp insights into the limitations of closed communities; parallels with Miriam Toews in examining cultural clashes.
  • Ralph Friesen: Steinbach’s Mitch Toews champions the underdog; balances humour with heartfelt engagement; moral courage and love as central outcomes.
  • Zilla Jones: Asks universal questions of belonging, conformity, and dissent that emerge in vividly local settings; metaphorically rich prose.
  • Linda Rogers Van Krugel: An author skilled in exploring outsiderhood, moral complexity, and intergenerational growth; offers mastery of language, humour, and cultural nuance.
  • Winnipeg Free Press: Mitch Toews writes with grit, humour, and tenderness, elevating everyday prairie life into unforgettable art. He’s an authentic storyteller—rooted in Mennonite prairie life, yet speaking to the universal. He captures the rhythms of small-town life and renders them with warmth, wit, and lasting resonance.

Positioning:

  • Strengths: Skilled storyteller bridging cultural specificity and universal themes; adept at linking humour and emotional depth; strong voice for intergenerational and small-town narratives.
  • Unique points: Mennonite cultural insider-outsider lens; layered humour; complex portrayals of gender, hierarchy, and morality; recurring motifs (bread, baseball) anchor stories in tangible, evocative imagery.
  • Audiences: Readers of literary fiction, Canadian prairie literature, “Mennolit” and other cultural heritage narratives, coming-of-age sagas, and intergenerational stories; fans of Miriam Toews, Armin Wiebe, Patrick Friesen, and Andrew Unger.
  • Framing line: “Mitchell Toews writes with wit, wisdom, and heart, turning the intimate worlds of Mennonite family life into universally resonant stories of growth, moral courage, and the humour inherent in navigating the expectations of community and self.”

Artistic Ethos:

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

Anthologies

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When I began submitting stories to lit mags in 2016, I noticed a few calls for submissions to anthologies. Some contests published print anthologies of the longlisted stories. Other anthologies were not open to submissions. Instead, they contained stories the editors had hand-picked for their collection.

I wondered if my work would ever be good enough to submit to an anthology, never mind have a story invited for inclusion.

As these things go, there are varying levels of anthologies. My hardcover Norton Anthology text in 1974 at the University of Victoria would be one level. I did not aim quite that high, but I did offer my work to a few and over time, others asked to include stories I had written.

My stories (18 in total) have been in 16 anthologies. I am not as active in pursuing them as I was, but I still greatly respect the form and enjoy being included in an eclectic and far-flung grouping of authors.

Here’s my printed anthology publication list, to date:

Best of Fiction on the Web: 1976-2017, 2017, U.K.
The Machinery: Fauna, 2017, India
Just Words Vol. 2, 2018, Canada
The Immigrants, 2018, U.S.
We Refugees, 2019, U.S.
The Best Short Stories from the MOON, 2019, U.S.
A Fork in the Road, 2020, U.S.
Just Voices, 2020, Canada
Anthology of Short Stories Summer 2021, 2021, U.K.
This Will Only Take a Minute, 2022, Canada
Small Shifts: Short Stories of Fantastical Transformation, 2022, Canada
Framework of the Human Body, 2022, Canada
I Used to be an Animal Lover, 2023, Australia
Hardboiled and Loaded with Sin, 2023, U.S.
Prine Primed, 2024, U.S.
Nona Heaslip (Exile) Best Canadian Short Stories, 2024 (forthcoming), Canada

I hope to continue to contribute to excellent collections like these. Every time I work with an editor, I find I improve as a writer and my work benefits with some lustre or refinement that it might have otherwise missed.

I have been nominated four times for the renowned Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses Anthology but so far, no room under that prestigious umbrella for me—so there’s still a lot to aspire to.

All Our Swains Commend Her

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

Can’t wait to roll into Van with a couple of grandkids in tow to read at this event! Family day!

I’ll be reading excerpts from my 2nd Runner-up entry in this year’s PULP Literature Raven Short Story contest.

Live Reading Via Zoom

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02MgfKSvc93sm8NM84hKdsMkeVfd7YsZDr82pGGSAzWBJN1Q6DZ7M6SZkeUbephoFsl&id=531352832&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=RUbZ1f

You Figure it Out

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

Hannah Arendt

🤔 Yup…

Editing

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

Editing is difficult but rewarding.

Difficult because you are erasing what you have created. You are subtracting from or changing the very thing that got you in the publishing game! Feels risky.

Rewarding because your changes create something new, all over again. Plus, the editor is your ally and a trusted source that comes to you from a place other than the rocky mass between your (my) ears. Thank God for that.

I am preparing 24 stories for publication in the spring. Several folks are weighing in on my work and each day there’s a knot in my shoulders and that night’s dreams are peppered with flickering replays of scenes from the collection. I wake up, make notes, fall back asleep and then laugh at my scribbled nonsense in the morning.

Here is a segment, edited recently. I offer it as a fast in situ peek at the crime scene. It is from the story, “The Peacemongers” and the topic is Canadian Mennonites during the wars, WW2 in this case, who deigned to be officially named “Conscientious Objectors.” This meant they would work in labour camps in Canada rather than serving in the military.

I thought of Corky’s uncle John who worked at Loeb’s lumberyard. He wore a red vest and a plaid shirt and stood behind the counter at the lumber desk. He was a big man with very white teeth and he would stand there smiling and writing down what you wanted to buy. My dad would always order lumber from him and it always started out the same way. Dad would say, “I need some two-by-fours,” and John would say, “how many and how long do you need ’em?” Dad would reply “twenty pieces and forever!” Same joke every time. Then John would yell for one of the yard boys to come and load the order into our truck, his pencil poised above the order form, looking at my dad over his glasses. “Twelve-footers,” or whatever length he needed, was the answer, served with a slanted smile.

‘

Dad said John had been in a C.O. camp during the war. He told my dad stories about it and how he made lifelong friends there. “Some were in the camp for other reasons, but most were there to follow the Word. That meant something to us and it was like our battle, to stay true to what we had been taught and to what we would teach our children.” I heard him talk about this to my dad and other men at the lumberyard. He stood straight up and looked into the eyes of the person he to spoke to. His voice was firm and he was not trying to convince anyone—he was just telling it. I was too young to understand everything, but thought he was telling the truth, exactly as he knew it and believed it.

.

I sometimes felt as though John and many others like him in our town believed, maybe secretly, that God was the biggest, toughest, most bad-ass Mennonite of them all. As if God would do all the fighting for us, and He would take no prisoners. I’m not sure that made our desire to live a life of pacifism any better. Possibly worse. It made God seem to me like a kind of bully—forever smiting Old Testament armies and kings that He didn’t like and constantly fighting with the Devil. Like Archie and Don, who fought almost every day after school at the corner of Hannover and Kroeker, accomplishing nothing but scuffed chins and bloody knuckles.[MT1]

 [MT1] Added 22-09-10 in a moment of random inspiration.

—Considered but not promised, for “Pinching Zwieback” At Bay Press

A Collection of Short Stories

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Here it is… the announcement I’ve been waiting to make public since my story in grade four at Southwood School in Steinbach made it onto the classroom bulletin board.

Bigger me, bigger bulletin board.

Cheers, respectively, to teacher Miss Hildebrand and publisher Matt Joudrey.

“Pinching Zwieback” is a themed fictional account of the lives and characters in a place on the Canadian prairies called Hartplatz. It features the Zehen family and many others whose comings and goings represent events both real and imagined under the Prussian blue sky. Among them: Hart & Justy, Schmietum Jake, Pete Vogel, and Matt Zehen, whose journey is observed from childhood to later in life. Characters that really schmack!

More info as we get closer to the spring 2023 launch. Watch this space and my Facebook and Twitter pages. (LinkedIn too.)

Third Time’s a Charm?

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[…] From Wikipedia: The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press that honors the best “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot” published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to submit works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976. It is supported and staffed by volunteers.

The founding editors were Anaïs Nin, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern, Gordon Lish, Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler, Nona Balakian, Paul Bowles, Paul Engle, Ralph Ellison, Reynolds Price, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, Bill Henderson and William Phillips.

* * *

My story, “Sweet Caporal” about a morning of fishing on Big Whiteshell Lake has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Editor Robert Boucheron on behalf of the quarterly literary journal, Rivanna Review, of Charlottesville, Va.

This is my third Pushcart nomination, the first from a U.S. periodical. It is the second time a version of “Sweet Caporal” has been nominated.

Place and Time

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

foc flannery place and time quote only

Ah, eternity.

My stories—and everyone else’s—spring from life. Life lived, life observed, life imagined. Life reconstructed.

A vital part of each story—and each life—is place and time. Truths from one era or one location or one moment in a given journey alter and define the future.

Driven by my own curiosity, here is a roll-call of Place, Time, and basic protagonist context from my stories:

i — “Encountered on the Shore” A university student makes an unsettling discovery in downtown Winnipeg, in the fall of 1973.

ii — “A Vile Insinuation” During the summer following, the main character from “Encountered on the Shore” considers fate and blessings at a baseball tournament in Vita, Manitoba, near the US border.

iii — “Without Reason” Now retired, the MC from “Encountered” and “Vile”, is diagnosed with cancer and he considers his plight and that of others like him. Set in his small Mennonite prairie hometown, current day.

i — “Zero to Sixty” A retired man is attacked, near Christmas in Chilliwack, BC, current day.

ii — “The Margin of the River” and the audio except, “Wide Winter River” The MC from “Zero to Sixty” considers what happened the day before and sees first hand the inequity and sorrow that is built into life. All life.

“The Rothmans Job” An odd couple set out on a dubious nighttime caper during a fierce winter blizzard in Winnipeg, during the 1970s.

“South of Oromocto Depths” A teenage boy gets into a foolish skirmish with his father on the Victoria Day long weekend in 1971 New Brunswick.

 “Nothing to Lose” A former hockey player looks back on his life and his regrets in rural Manitoba during the dusty heat of summer, in the Sixties.

“Heavy Artillery” A young baseball fan in 1962 becomes embroiled in adult suspicion and prejudice in a small prairie town — predominantly Mennonite. (The imaginary, recurrent town of “Hartplatz, Manitoba”.)

“A Fisherman’s Story” In 1970, on the Mexican Pacific coast, an elderly woman and her young daughter are dealt an unfair hand. (P.S. — the prequel and the sequel to this story appear in the trilogy “The Bottom of the Sky”. See link below.)

“Winter Eve in Walker Creek Park” A trio of females on a wintery night in St. Catherines, Ontario, near Christmastime, current day.

“Breezy and the Six-Pack Sneaker” A rainy, beery night in Hartplatz in the Sixties is the scene for a tangled yarn of deception.

“The Fifty Dollar Sewing Machine” A straight-laced Mennonite husband and wife take on danger in a dark Winnipeg alley in 1934. (Rerun on Literally Stories, Feb 17.)

“Frozen Tag” A man encounters a strange reprise from his past (at the Minneapolis Athletic Club in 1980) in the Chilliwack Leisure Centre, current day.

“The Business of Saving Souls”  A youth pastor in the fictitious city of Tribune, in the northern US Midwest meets challenges in the sanctuary of a gleaming megachurch, current day.

“The Preacher and His Wife” Palace intrigue, Harplatz style, throws a family into an untoward uproar in the 1960s.

“I am Otter” A shunned congregant discusses culture, power, and enfranchisement with a stranger near a lake in Manitoba, current day.

“The Beefeater and the Donnybrook”  A mild-mannered Halifax, NS tourist is mistaken and mistook in drizzly London, current day.

“The Log Boom” Poignant points of view — a father, son, and grandfather in the Lower Mainland of BC, current day.

“The Peacemongers” War, bullies and knuckle justice from the perspective of a boy in Hartplatz, circa 1965.

“Fairchild, McGowan and the Detective” Recalling employment, both the good and the bad in Hartplatz and Winnipeg, 1970-80.

“Graperoo” A piece of Graperoo bubblegum experiences the four seasons in rural Manitoba in the Sixties.

“So Are They All” It’s September 1961 and a young boy receives an education in loyalty and courage in his grandmother’s country raspberry patch.

“The Seven Songs” A middle-aged Canadian man meets a local contemporary at a resort in Mexico, current day.

“Fall From Grace” A boy gets stuck in a fraught adventure and learns about his father through it in the heat of a prairie summer in Hartplatz, 1963.

“Away Game” A 50-something man meets with an older family member at the side of a dreamy, summery lake in Manitoba’s boreal forest, current day.

“In the Dim Light Beyond the Fence” The reader travels back into Canadian small-town hardball with the MC, reliving a fateful doubleheader from the Fifties.

“City Lights” A small-town “up-and-comer” gets in over his head in Toronto, current day.

“Groota Pieter” Spring softball in small-town Mennonite Manitoba is described, from the Sixties to current day.

“Sweet Caporal at Dawn” On a moody Manitoba morning near a spring lake, a youngster and an older confederate fish for pickerel during the mid-Seventies.

“The Bottom of the Sky” A trilogy that follows a “pinche” cabin-boy and the ship’s captain on a fishing charter boat from 1955 Acapulco to the future in a fishing village in the Seventies. (P.S. – If you’re inclined, give this story a read and tell me if you think it could be adapted into a screenplay. I see it in flickering snatches of film in my head and just wonder if that occurs to anyone else. If you’re a screenwriter or in film, I’d love an opinion — tough love included. —mjt)

“Shade Tree Haven” An adult remembers more than he cares to as he thinks back to summers at a favourite swimming pool in the early 1960s.

“The Narrowing” A sensitive boy and his straight-ahead grandfather go through a harrowing experience in the Manitoba wilds, current day. An important secondary character in Abbotsford, BC is part of the story.

“The Phage Match” In a surreal radio broadcast from somewhere in Canada, current day, the evils of drug addiction are the backdrop for some strange characters.

“Died Rich” A high school freshman in a frigid southern Manitoba winter in 1961 struggles to endure.

“Concealment” A fledgling Manitoba business traveller gets more than he expects on a springtime trip to the Atlanta Zoo in the 1980s.

“Mulholland & Hardbar” (Novel WIP) A troubled youth experiences the four seasons in the Canadian Shield: love, friendship, deceit, and violence. 1972.

Drama: From the Greek, “to do” or “to act”

Four Fantasies

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A group of artists gathers for a meal. They each bring two dishes, one edible and the other inspirational.

The first of them lifts the lid on a steaming Dutch oven full of exotic stir-fry. She is small, with fine features and possessing a direct, flowing gaze that makes each one at the table feel a personal connection to her before she even says a word.

“Each mouthful is different, an adventure, a departure from the last, an experience defined by its variety,” she says, flourishing the lid with eloquence. “And yet, they each come from a similar culinary tradition and are all prepared by the same chef, in one communal pot. Each ingredient is spiced with varying amounts of identical additives: conflict, joy, desire, personality, sorrow and more. Much more.”

After plates are loaded and the group tucks in, a thin man with a sparse beard stands.

“My friends,” he begins, “I’ve brought wine. It’s meant to complement and heighten the enjoyment of the meal, but if you give it a chance, I hope that you can find in its complexity a fulfillment that stands alone. Savour it for what it contains, however well-hidden and blended the constituents are and enjoy the way each lends itself to the plenary, just as each wave adds its own shape to the shore.”

Glasses chime and there is a moment of satisfaction expressed by the table as collective stillness while the wine’s secrets are shared.

Without introduction, a brassy fanfare sounds followed by the swirl of parting curtains that separate the dining room from the house. A brawny, serious figure enters. With long, powerful strides this latest presenter commands the room’s immediate attention and is followed by a troupe of brightly costumed servers.  Perfectly conceived and composed plated entrees are set before the diners.

“Each is a masterpiece—with a beginning, a middle and an ending—that is delivered not only by taste but by the presentation, artistry, and the interaction between each delicacy. The arrangement of every morsel a work of art of its own!” Music swirls and fills the room from some unseen orchestra and those assembled take their seats, voices hushed, attention rapt.

In a dark corner, unnoticed, a furtive, wide-eyed rat keeps an unblinking watch with keen lamps that blinter like wee distant winter stars.

“How? Where did they learn these arts? How do I join them? Won’t I be crushed by their greatness?”

In sensuous forepaws, a shred of cabbage is braided and interwoven with a trifle of cheese so thin it is opaque. The grey rat weaves with busy concentration. Clawed fingers fret, the fragile conception set on a single sparkling sequin dropped without care or worry from the bedazzlement above, so far above.

“I’ll offer this portion from my pantry. Perhaps, someone will like it…”