Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. STARDUST is a series of literary essays defining Bruce Serafin's world. The teenage Serafin is a captivating figure, freshly arrived from the United States and eager to immerse himself in the particular delights of a still largely frontier-era Vancouver. As a young man enrolled at SFU, he refuses the perm pressed upon him in a Chinatown barber shop and eavesdrops on his rowdy neighbors in a Powell Street apartment house. Working in the post office, Serafin discovers Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant and realizes for the first time that writing about working-class people is not only possible, but desirable. He also discusses the work of Don DeLillo, Terry Glavin, Steve McCaffery, Northrop Frye, and William Henry Drummond. There's an engagement to these essays that lightly sketches the workings of a mind forever learning.

Bruce Serafin (1950-2007) moved to Houston, Texas with his family at the age of fifteen, and to Vancouver when he was nineteen. Serafin founded the Vancouver Review and was its editor from 1990-1997. He held a variety of positions at Canada Post, from letter carrier to editor of the union newsletter, over the course of fourteen years. He worked most recently as a substantive editor at Douglas College, and at the time of his death was at work on a new book set east of the Rockies. He is the author of Colin's Big Thing, which was named one of the Globe and Mail's 100 Best Books of 2004.