Kevin A. Couture has been nominated for the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, and was included in the anthology Coming Attractions. The stories in his debut collection, Lost Animal Club, have all appeared in Canadian or American journals. Couture grew up in a B.C. mining town and now lives on Vancouver Island with his wife, two children and their Brittany spaniel, who spectacularly defies animal training.

Lost Animal Club

This debut collection creates a world where the veneer of humanness stretches thin and often cracks as a menagerie of burdened characters reveal their beast-like traits. A pre-teen “rescues” dogs in order to sell them back to their well-off owners; a man confronts his drive for alcohol and the deadly and isolating consequences that leave him to risk his last scrap of control; and two kids, for different reasons, execute their plan to capture a bear cub. Lost Animal Club is gripping and honest, with metaphors and similes as startling as the harsh choices the characters make.