Introduction / David Staines -- To the light house / Margaret Atwood -- Art is making : Carol Shields in conversation and correspondence / Eleanor Wachtel -- The square root of a clock tick : time and timing in Carol Shields's poetry and prose / Anne Giardini and Joseph Giardini -- All that "below-the-surface" stuff : Carol Shields's conversational modes / Coral Ann Howells -- Guilt, guile, and ginger in small ceremonies / Elizabeth Waterston -- Revisiting the sequel : Carol Shields's companion novels / Wendy Roy -- Sarah Binks, Pat Lowther, and the satirical gothic turn in Carol Shields's Swann : a mystery / Cynthia Sugars -- Assembling identity : late-life agency in The stone angel and The stone diaries / Patricia Life -- Male-pattern bewilderment in Larry's party / John Van Rys -- Departures, arrivals : Canada/United States migrations and the trope of travel in the fiction of Carol Shields / Alex Ramon -- "To be faithful to the idea of being good": the expansion to goodness in Carol Shields's Unless / Margaret Steffler -- Narrative pragmatism : goodness in Carol Shields's Unless / Tim Heath -- Shields's guerrilla gardeners : sowing seeds of defiance and care / Shelley Boyd -- Cool empathy in the short fiction of Carol Shields / Marilyn Rose -- The "perfect gift" and the "true gift" : empathetic dialogue in Carol Shields's "A scarf " and Joyce Carol Oates's "The scarf " / Elizabeth Reimer -- Prepositional domesticity / Aritha van Herk -- Grand slam : birthing women and bridging generations n Carol Shields's Play thirteen hands / Nora Foster Stovel -- Archives as traces of life process and engagement : the late years of the Carol Shields fonds / Catherine Hobbs -- The voices of Carol Shields / Joan Clark -- The clarity of her anger / Jane Urquhart -- My seen-sang, Carol Shields : a memoir of a master teacher / Wayson Choy -- Carol Shields / Martin Levin.