"In this exceptional collection of original essays, twenty-four celebrated writers take the reader on an emotional and physical journey like no other: giving birth. Lynn Coady relates the painful memory of her teenage pregnancy and the anguish of giving up her newborn for adoption; Peter Behrens expresses a father's feeling of utter helplessness and incomparable joy during the birth of his first child; Afua Cooper reflects upon giving birth in a new land with evolving customs; Anne Fleming describes the process of choosing a male donor with her same-sex partner; and Jaclyn Moriarty transcribes her grandmother's and her mother's birth stories, along with her own, to create a tender oral history, spanning three generations.Edited by master storyteller Dede Crane and award-winning author Lisa Moore, both of whom share their own accounts, Great Expectations delivers all the stuff of good stories: love, humour, wisdom, and humanity."--BOOK JACKET.