First off, I’d like to thank the folks that came out to the EW Reading Series the other week, and especially Jess Taylor, who runs the whole deal and got me up there. I read the middle part of the story Old Man Marchuk, which appears in the current issue of EVENT. All in all it seemed to go swimmingly. Below is a picture that I stole from the EW facebook page.

Hardcastle reading from Old Man Marchuk (EVENT), at the EW Reading Series

That same story still has some legs apparently. As I recently had John Metcalf call me up and let me know that he wanted to include Old Man Marchuk in the Best Canadian Stories anthology that he curates for Oberon Press. Metcalf is a renowned writer, critic, and fiction editor (currently at Biblioasis), and he collects these stories by reading every single issue of every literary journal published in Canada in a given year. I am honoured to have that story chosen and will pass more info along when I get some. As far as I know Best Canadian Stories is published at year’s end. Writers who have appeared in BCS include Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Rohinton Mistry, Timothy Taylor, Lisa Moore, Patrick Lane, Zsuzsi Gartner, Marjorie Celona, Zoey Leigh Peterson, Lynn Coady, and the notorious Amy Jones.

Last week I also got word that a new story I wrote, called Debris, has been accepted for publication in Shenandoah, a leading US literary journal out of Washington & Lee University. I have been trying to crack the US journal scene for a long while, with just a few online publications so far. This story was almost picked up a couple of times with some very kind commentary on how it narrowly missed. Nonetheless, the good folks at Shenandoah, and especially their editor Rod Smith, read and accepted this story quickly and I’m told it should be set for October, in their fall issue. Landing this one made me pretty damn happy. Perhaps I’ll be able to find a few more journals south of the 49th that are willing to print some of my newer stuff.

That is the most of it for now. I am working on other secret moves that I can’t talk about, but I’ll say something to that end if or when I can. In the meantime, thanks for reading and for keeping the dream alive.

Hardcastle