Description
Winner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Speculative Fiction
A bear runs amok in a luxury hotel. A daily swim at the local pool becomes a question of life or death. The champion of a border wall faces an unexpected adversary.
The twelve stories in Different Beasts ask what it means to be both human and monster. Shape-shifting waifs, haunted stuffies, scavenging drones, insectoid demon-gods, and mutant angels all come to life in this wildly imagined debut. As do broken soldiers, disgraced politicians, tired parents, ogres and children, opportunists, and desperate survivors - human beasts each struggling with the animalian aspects of their nature.
In this wild, fantastical, viscerally memorable debut, J.R. McConvey explores the power dynamics that undergird social relationships and crystallize into structures of fealty and worship, fear and control, aspiration and desire.
About the Author
J.R. McConvey's stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and the Matrix Lit Pop award. His work has appeared in the Malahat Review, Joyland, EVENT, the Puritan, the New Quarterly, carte blanche, filling Station, and the Feathertale Review. He is the winner of the 2016 Jack Hodgins Founders' Award for Fiction.
Reviews
"Different Beasts made me fall in love with the craft of short stories all over again. This collection took me to places - some uncomfortable, others hearbreaking - that I wasn't expecting to go. This is the work of a writer of beastly talent, vision, and guts." -- Brian Francis, author of Break in Case of Emergency
Awards
Winner of Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Speculative Fiction 2020 (Canada).
Book Information
ISBN 9781773101262
Author J.R. McConvey
Format Paperback
Page Count 210
Imprint Goose Lane Editions
Publisher Goose Lane Editions
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 203mm * 127mm * 14mm
