Camhure |best| — Gemma Wren

Her debut collection, The Salt in the Crevice (2016), weaves together oral testimonies from former residents of a submerged Acadian village, her own childhood recollections, and speculative fragments. Critic Roland Pugh described it as “a ghost box of a book—part ethnography, part elegy.”

Camhure’s middle name, Wren, is not incidental. In interviews, she has cited the bird’s plainness and persistence as a personal totem. “The wren builds dozens of dummy nests before settling,” she told The Coastal Review in 2019. “That’s what writing feels like to me. Preparing shelters you never live in.” gemma wren camhure

Raised in the coastal fog of Nova Scotia’s South Shore, Camhure grew up in a household of archivists and boatbuilders—a combination she once called “an education in endings.” Her maternal grandfather was a keeper of shipping ledgers; her father restored wooden dories. This early immersion in salvage and storytelling informs much of her writing, which often meditates on what endures after a place has been abandoned or forgotten. Her debut collection, The Salt in the Crevice