Eva Crocker
Eva Crocker’s stories have been published in Riddle Fence, The Overcast, and The Telegram’s Cuffer Anthology. Barrelling Forward was shortlisted for the 2015 RBC Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. She won the Canadian authors emerging writers award and was also a finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ emerging writers this year. Crocker recently completed a Master’s Degree in English Literature at Memorial University.
Barrelling Forward
The objects, rituals, and scenes of everyday life take on an almost mythic quality in the stories of Barrelling Forward, while remaining intimately recognizable to us all. Crocker peers at the underbelly of poverty and work, ambition and apathy, loneliness and love, to find the sliver of beauty in each spot. In “Auditioning,” a twin makes a desperate attempt to reclaim her individuality. In “Serving,” a father and a son give parallel accounts of what it’s like to let life eat you from the inside out. And in the Cuffer Prize−winning “Dead Skin,” an after-school walk through the barrens leaves two boys forever changed.
In stories that ache with longing even as they pulse with new possibilities, Crocker gives us an unforgettable array of ordinary people barrelling forward towards what’s next. Vivid, sexy, funny, and raw, this is a marvellous debut from one of Canada’s most thrilling new writers.