Herb Curtis

1949-

Herb Curtis (novelist, short-story writer, and humourist) was born 23 December 1949 in Keenan Siding, located on the Miramichi River a few kilometres south of Blackville, New Brunswick. Curtis attended a one-room schoolhouse in Keenan Siding for the first six years of his education and then attended Blackville Rural High School for several years before leaving school to guide and work in the woods. At the age of eighteen, Curtis moved to Fredericton, NB where he still lives. For the next twenty years, he continued to dabble in fiction while working for much of this time at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel as a bartender, bellhop, bouncer, and jack-of-all-trades. In the late 1970s, Curtis and a partner formed the musical-comedy act “Shadrack and Dryfly,” which played at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel on Saturday nights. In the late 1980s, Curtis left his job at the Lord Beaverbrook Hotel to pursue his writing full time. Shadrack Nash and Dryfly Ramsey became the central characters of his first novel, The Americans are Coming, which was published in 1989. It was the first volume in what came to be known as the Brennan Siding Trilogy, which includes The Last Tasmanian (1991); winner of the 1992 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and shortlisted for the 1992 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, and The Lone Angler (1993). The trilogy was followed by another novel (The Silent Partner (1996)) as well as humourous short fiction entitled Hoofprints on the Sheet (1993) and Luther Corhern’s Salmon Camp Chronicles (1999), which was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award. Curtis also ventured into non-fiction with the publication of The Scholten Story (1996). Two of Curtis's novels have been adapted for Theatre New Brunswick's stage: The Americans are Coming (1997), whose script was co-authored by Curtis, and The Last Tasmanian (1999). Curtis continues to write fiction and returns regularly to the Curtis homestead, where he still occasionally serves as a guide on the Miramichi River. 

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Fredericton, Keenan Siding

Archival Material

• Herb Curtis fonds
  ⌄
  Location

  University of New Brunswick Archives & Special Collections

  Website/Catalogue Record

  View Archival Record

  Retrieval Number

  MG L 36

  Date Range of Material

  1988, 1990, 1996, 2005

  Extent

  12 cm textual records

  Scope and Content Note

  Fonds consists of typed manuscripts and newspaper clippings of Herb Curtis' writing. Includes manuscript copies of: The Americans are Coming (1988), The Last Tasmanian; Look What the Cat Drug In; Bee Shepard (unpublished manuscript, [ca. 199-?]); and His Purpose to Unfold: The Scholtens (1996). Also include three newspaper clippings: "Curtis writes a Miramichi Novel: and "Not that stupid Greece stuff again" from the Miramichi Leader, 8 Nov 1989, Section B; "Truths I told my father, Or, how I became a logger on the Miramichi" from The Brunswick Reader, 30 March 1996, p. 6; and, "The mourning star, The big city of Fredericton lured Kid Lauder with its promise of Hollywood, glitter and money", from The New Brunswick Reader, 19 March 2005, p. 11.