Quill and Quire

Fiction: Short

Hamburger

By Daniel Perry

The stories in Daniel Perry’s debut collection are arranged in three sections – Coarse, Medium, and Fine – corresponding to three textures of hamburger meat. This provides an obvious link to the book’s title (which ... Read More »

May 17, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Double Dutch

By Laura Trunkey

Double Dutch is a confident debut collection containing nine stories that mostly offer varying perspectives on a single theme. That theme – the body/soul duality – is an old one, though the way Trunkey employs ... Read More »

February 29, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Bad Things Happen

By Kris Bertin

An armchair profiler challenge based on the acknowledgments page in the debut story collection by Kris Bertin, a Haligonian bartender: We are presented with the fact that the stories were written when Bertin was between ... Read More »

February 8, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Last Words

By Hugh Graham

I for one will never tire of stories about solitary, bookish men lounging around Europe and sleeping with beautiful, mysterious women who are desperate to know what they’re thinking. In the linked short-fiction collection Last ... Read More »

January 11, 2016 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Ten Women

By George Bowering

First, there is the matter of the title. George Bowering’s story collection does indeed comprise 10 stories, each designated by a woman’s name, but only two and a half of them focus directly on the ... Read More »

December 15, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Moving Parts

By Lana Pesch

The nine stories that comprise Toronto writer Lana Pesch’s debut collection veer between piercing and playful, sinister and sentimental. Things begin rather meekly with the title story, about a serendipitous first date that is almost ... Read More »

November 30, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Night Moves

By Richard Van Camp

Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, and its fictional counterpart Fort Simmer, familiar to readers of Richard Van Camp, form the backdrop for the Dogrib First Nation author’s latest short-story collection. This group of 11 ... Read More »

November 19, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

Pauls

By Jess Taylor

In Pauls, the first short-fiction collection by National Magazine Award–winning Toronto writer Jess Taylor, a lot of bad things happen to people named Paul. And friends of people named Paul. Each story contains, sometimes rather ... Read More »

November 12, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ Debris

By Kevin Hardcastle

With his debut story collection, Toronto writer Kevin Hardcastle introduces readers to a world that may appear as foreign as any imagined science-fiction or fantasy milieu. That he renders this world so strongly – simultaneously ... Read More »

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Fiction: Short