In Good Company

Nominees for the 2008 Western Magazine Awards were announced today and I was chuffed to see my personal essay, "The Ballad of Big and Small" (Grain, Vol.35 No.1) nominated in the Human Experience category. Even more exciting? My good friend Charlotte Gill's nomination in the same category for her Vancouver Review tree-planting piece, "Eating Dirt". Congratulations, Charlotte!

Catch the Red Eye

My personal essay, "The Ballad of Big and Small" leads off the Summer 2007 issue of Grain Magazine (Vol.35, No.1). The issue's title, Tired of Burning, seems apt for the piece. Here's the opening:

"You woke me on December 25th, a rifle across your knees, barrel pointed toward the flickering Christmas tree. I shook my head, closed my eyes and opened them to see if you were still there. I didn't know you owned a gun. Instinct told me it was loaded. Your breath reeked of booze, but your voice was calm, reassuring.

"Bro, let's go out and shoot some shit.""

Happy May Day!

Seeing as it's International Workers' Day, it seems only appropriate to announce that my short story, "Hops", which won sub-Terrain's 2006 Lush Triumphant Literary Award, appears in Issue 46 (Spring/Summer 07) of said magazine, fittingly themed, "Bad Jobs."

The story, brimming with violence and sex and violent sex, is appropriately accompanied by a shocking and compelling illustration by local artist, Derek Von Essen.

Douglas Coupland's Fictional World Takes the Stage

Does the work of Canada's most famous zeitgeist writer, Douglas Coupland make for good theatre? I interviewed Katrina Dunn, Artistic Director of Touchstone Theatre and playwright, Michael Lewis MacLennan about the challenges of bringing Life After God to the stage.

"Scout lies naked in a warm pool holding hands in a circle with six of his closest friends. They are “pretending to be embryos” in a “life lived in paradise,” one without religion, love or politics. This poignant scene opens Douglas Coupland’s short story “1000 Years”in Life After God, and in that rare moment of intimacy and closenesss, a startling question is posed that seems to have emerged naturally from Coupland’s previous two books, Generation X and Shampoo Planet: Can we find meaning or connection in the madness of the modern world and in the absence of belief?" Read the full feature...

A Life in Pictures

The Winter/Spring 2006 issue of Trek Magazine features my profile of visionary lighting designer, Robert Gardiner and Governor General's Award-winning playwright, Kevin Kerr as they discuss their recent ground-breaking collaboration, Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge.

"On June 15, 1878, in Palo Alto, California, Eadweard Muybridge photographed the first fast motion serial images of a horse that captured a moment of suspension when no hooves touched the ground. The man who sponsored the experiment was the horse’s owner, railroad builder and former governor, Leland Stanford, who would later found Stanford University." Read the full feature...

Brothers in Firearms

An early version of the story, "Two," from my collection Bull Head appears in the Spring/Summer issue of The Antigonish Review (Issue 141).

"Maurice lay in his sleeping bag on the single mattress and glanced around the one-room cabin until his eyes adjusted to the dull glow. A flicker of amber light twisted and bent behind blackened glass, tossing shadows against the log walls. A yellowed calendar, thirty-five years old hung on a steel spike; faded pink stubs from raffle tickets bought for a local Rodeo Queen contest were pinned to a log, the draw made twenty-two years ago; wrinkled and warped hunting magazines sat stacked beneath the rack holding two polished shotguns; a washcloth, dishtowel, flannel shirt and navy pants drooped from a thin clothesline near the woodstove pipe." Read the story...