Kevin Hardcastle
Kevin Hardcastle is a fiction writer from Simcoe County, Ontario. He studied writing at the University of Toronto and Cardiff University. He was a finalist for the 2012 Journey Prize, and his stories have been published widely in Canada and anthologized internationally. His debut short story collection, Debris, won the Trillium Book Award and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. He lives in Toronto.
In the Cage
A feared cage fighter in Mixed Martial Arts, Daniel is closing in on greatness until an injury derails his career. Out of work in his rural hometown, Daniel slips into the underworld, moonlighting as muscle for a childhood-friend-turned-mid-level-gangster. While his wife works nights and his 12-year-old daughter gets into scraps of her own, Daniel tries to escape and build a nobler life for his family but he sinks deeper into a violent, unpredictable world, soon sparking a conflict that can only be settled in blood. Written in spare, muscular prose, In the Cage penetrates the heart of what it means to endure life in the underclass, revealing the small joys found there.