The name, Borrowed Black, came when I was a teenager, telling stories to my younger cousins in our cabin in the Maine woods.

In 1965, I spent the first of four summers in Cartwright, Labrador. I realized that the children had no books that were set in their land. The library bookshelves were lined with British, American, and Canadian classics but none that took place in Labrador. No published stories, it seemed, that were truly their own.

This bothered me. “Dear God,” I prayed, “please give me a story for the children of Labrador.” He answered my prayer and gave me Borrowed Black. I was twenty years old.

In June, 1967, when my uncle and I were flying from Castine, Maine, to Cartwright, Labrador, we were grounded by fog over the Gaspe Peninsula. We had to spend two nights at a fishing camp in Tabusintac, New Brunswick, before we could continue our flight north. It was there that I wrote Borrowed Black. The poem came quickly, in two days, with very little revision. It was as if it were not my own, that I was penning a story that had always been. Character names, yes, and bits of story, had been with me for two years but not the cohesive narrative that came to me those two days in June. I was twenty-two years old. It was not to see publication for twelve more years.

Because of its myth-like qualities, Borrowed Black has often been called a folk tale, but it is an original fantasy.

Since its publication in 1979, Borrowed Black has been translated into seven languages, appeared in 13 different editions, and has been adapted for stage five times. The following is a chronological list of the editions, productions, and awards for Borrowed Black.