Rea Tarvydas lives and writes in Calgary, Alberta. Her stories can be found in The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Grain and Menopause Anthology (forthcoming in 2017). Tarvydas is the winner of the 2012 Brenda Strathern “Late Bloomers” Writing Prize, curated by the Calgary Foundation and presented at Wordfest. In addition, her writing has been nominated for a National Magazine Award. She has lived in Hong Kong and, as such, experienced one version of the expat life, which is the genesis of her debut collection of short fiction.

How to Pick Up a Maid in Statue Square

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.