Ghost Pine: All Stories True by Jeff Miller
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Ghost Pine: All Stories True offers thirteen years of sparkling true stories from the life of author Jeff Miller, compiling the best of his long-running zine. From his youth in suburban Ottawa in the late 1990s, to travels across Canada and North America and his current home in Montreal, Miller’s stories are equal measures funny and sad, nostalgic and unsentimental, punk rock and grandparents.
“Finally, the best stories from Canada’s longest running and best punk zine all in one long-overdue book! Jeff Miller is a collector of lost moments and a poet of the back alleys of the heart where we tenderly but ferociously guard innocence, inspiration, and our deepest fragile hopes from an indifferent world. Ghost Pine is a tree fort, a train yard, a treasure map. A refuge.”
Erica Dawn Lyle, author of On the Lower Frequencies
“Jeff Miller writes raw truths like an innocent, describes people with harsh forgiveness, and sees the dreary world we inhabit as if it were brand new. He makes all memories beautiful, even the painful ones. There’s no other voice like his.”
Emily Pohl-Weary, author of A Girl Like Sugar and Strange Times at Western High
Reviews
“Whether you still hold dear the smell of photocopier toner in the internet age, or this is your first exposure to the zine, the stories of Ghost Pine stick long after the last page is turned.”
This Magazine
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“Jeff Miller spins an entertaining true life tale, especially when discussing his suburban punk rock youth.”
Boing Boing
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“When Miller is really in stride, recounting his relationship with his grandfather or succumbing to the outsider romance of punk rock, his stories break out of their indie parameters and achieve a real poignancy.”
Montreal Gazette
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“Anyone to whom suburbs ‘became the symbol of everything wrong in the world,’ who belonged to a high school ‘Social Justice Club,’ or who marches when ‘evil politicians come to town’ will relate to and chuckle at these slices of youthful life. . . . Sometimes the writing in Ghost Pine is stunning.”
Montreal Review of Books
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“Pithy and charming, Miller’s voice is an engaging one, and reading this you’ll feel as though you’re with a friend, and that the two of you are out together, taking note of all to see.”
Ottawa XPress
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“Miller repeatedly does what zine writers are supposed to do: he brings us into his world. He takes us where he’s been and where he’s going.”
Razorcake
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“Jeff Miller’s writing in Ghost Pine over the past thirteen years stands out amidst the scribbling crowd.”
Maximumrocknroll
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“The beauty that exists on street corners, coffee shops, highways and subways is continuously brought to life in Ghost Pine, oft ignored pockets gracefully illuminated.”
Broken Pencil
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“Miller slows the progression . . . of growing up to examine its transformative passages.”
The Coast
Press
“Jeff Miller’s Ghost Pine wins at Expozine” Quill & Quire, April 2011.
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Interview: All in a Day CBC Ottawa, November 2010.
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Profile: “Canada’s zine scene.” Halifax Chronicle Herald, 8 August 2010.
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Profile: “Pine & Dandy” National Post, August 2010.
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Interview: Mainstreet CBC Nova Scotia, August 2010.
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Panel: Saturday Morning in Montreal CJAD Montreal, May 2010.
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Interview: These Things People Make CFRU Guelph, May 2010.
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“This Ghost Pine Interview is True” Torontoist, April 2010.