If you take a gander at Joyland today, you’ll see my stupid head in a photo and a story posted below, called Shape of a sitting man. This story got picked up by Joyland’s Kathryn Mockler a few months ago, after ending up as a finalist for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award. It is a pretty short one, at about 2500 words, so it’s perfect to just tear through on the bus or in line for something and just get really depressed in a short amount of time.

Big, big thanks to Mockler, my editor on this one, who had to put up with my disdain for all commas. Also thanks to Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis, and everyone at Joyland who helped get this story out there.

Right now they’re trying to raise a little bit of dough to redesign Joyland, and to possible get some paid internship type stuff going on. So check out their fundraising efforts if you can and throw a few dollars their way if you can spare it. 

Joyland publishes authors from all over North America, and they’ve published many, many established writers along with up and comers. Writing folks I know like Andrew Sullivan, Catriona Wright, Andrew Hood, Tory Hetherington, Kerry Clare, and Naben Ruthnum, have all been published there over the last couple of years, going toe to toe with all the excellent writers south of the 49th parallel. It is a great journal with a long reach and stories that have gone in the Journey Prize Anthology and Best American Short Stories.

That story of mine is another one that is going to be part of my collection, Debris, coming out with the mighty Biblioasis next year. So yeah, give it a go if you like, and wander around the place to read a pile o’ good stories.

Thanks,

Hardcastle