Richard Kelly Kemick

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed I Am Herod, which takes readers backstage and undercover at one of the world’s largest Passion plays, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. His writing has been anthologized in Canada and the United Kingdom and won multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writer’s Guild of Alberta’s 2019 Howard O’Hagen Award for Best Short Story. Kemick’s limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan, and his essays have also been featured on CBC Radio. He lives in Vancouver.

Hello, Horse

A teenager’s job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother’s death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writers Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.

Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better and for worse.

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BE CURIOUSER

Provocative, entertaining short fiction. –Kirkus Reviews

Check out Richard Kelly Kemick’s podcast. –Natural Life

A non-believer’s hilarious, affectionate account of a summer embedded in the Badlands Passion Play. –Calgary Herald

Richard Kelly Kemick

FESTIVAL SHOWS

Turtle Island Reads (New Show)

The Way We… Wear

Hello, Horse