Short Fiction Showcase – $20

[gdlr_button href="https://www.artscommons.ca/WhatsOn/ShowDetails.aspx?show_id=5352FBF5-1F30-4F64-A640-4BB39ABE3872" target="_self" size="medium" background="#358CCB" color="#ffffff" border_color="#999999"]Buy Tickets[/gdlr_button] [gdlr_space height="20px"] Often underestimated and challenging to write, short fiction is uniquely appropriate to our fractured, alienated and accelerated existence. Established and emerging authors read from their latest collections, answer questions from the audience and sign books in this showcase. Hosted by Micheline Maylor. [gdlr_divider type="solid" size="100%" ]

Featured Books

Lost Animal Club by Kevin A. Couture

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.

The Museum at the End of the World by John Metcalf

This is John Metcalf's first book of fiction since Adult Entertainment, a New York Times Notable Book of 1990. The legendary Canadian writer and editor is back — in full comic force — with a linked collection of stories and novellas. Set in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans and Ottawa, these tales span the life of writer Robert Forde and his wife Sheila. Playing with various forms of comedy throughout, Metcalf paints a portrait of 20th century literary life with levity, satire and unsuspecting moments of emotional depth.

How to Pick Up a Maid in Statue Square by Rea Tarvydas

In her debut collection of stories, Rea Tarvydas captures the passions, pathos and isolation of expats gathered in Hong Kong, a place often called the “most thrilling city on the planet”. The stories follow a kind of “life cycle”, from the hedonistic first days in “How To Pick Up A Maid in Statue Square,” through to the muted middle in “Rephrasing Kate”, as Kate encounters a charismatic bad boy and is forced to admit her infidelities, to the inevitable end in “The Dirty Duck”, as Bill realizes his inability to commit and resolves to return home. Hong Kong alters each of these residents with a frenetic mixture of capitalism and exoticism.

Double Dutch by Laura Trunkey

Intensely imaginative and darkly emotional, the weird and wonderful stories in Double Dutch deftly alternate between fantasy and reality, transporting readers into worlds that are at once both familiar and uncanny — where animals are more human, and people more mysterious, than they first appear.

Teardown by Clea Young

Clea Young's collection of short stories navigates the whitewater of relationships—familial, romantic and those between friends old and new. These are stories about people you know and people you’ve been: they’re arguing about lamps in IKEA, and drinking gin and tonics on a dock in summer, unemployed and without prospects. But under Young’s astute gaze such charaters are anything but ordinary. With sharp and invigorated prose, she guides us through the shoals and rapids, along the way paying homage to our missteps, our foibles and ultimately to the complicated hearts that comprise a life. [gdlr_divider type="solid" size="100%" ] [gdlr_button href="https://www.artscommons.ca/WhatsOn/ShowDetails.aspx?show_id=5352FBF5-1F30-4F64-A640-4BB39ABE3872" target="_self" size="medium" background="#358CCB" color="#ffffff" border_color="#999999"]Buy Tickets[/gdlr_button]