Hello everyone. It has been pretty quiet over the last little while, what with book things winding down at the end of 2017 and winding back up somewhat at the beginning of 2018. Nonetheless, I do have a few readings and events coming up that are worth mentioning, for folks that might be interested.

• Common Reading Series – The Bell Jar Cafe – Toronto, Ontario – With Amy Jojo Jones & Cherie Dimaline – February 19th, 2018
• IFOA Weekly presents ‘What’s Life Got To Do With It?’ – Toronto, Ontario – With Mayank Bhatt, Terri Favro, Catherine Graham, Kevin Hardcastle and Grace O’Connell – Hosted by Lisa De Nikolits – March 7th, 2018
• Junction Reads – Toronto, Ontario – Guest Author – March 25th, 2018
• GritLit: Hamilton Readers & Writers Festival – Hamilton, Ontario – Guest Author – April 12th to April 15th, 2018
• Talk at the McLaren Art Centre – Barrie, Ontario – Guest Author – May 4th, 2018
• Festival America: Littératures et les cultures d’Amérique du Nord – Vincennes, France – Guest Author – September 20th to September 24th, 2018
• Wordstock Sudbury – Sudbury, Ontario – Guest Author – November 1st to November 3rd, 2018

These are all findable on my readings & events page on this site, and I’ll update any new readings or appearances there as they emerge.

I’m looking forward to the festivals especially, including GritLit in Hamilton, and Wordstock Sudbury, which both seem like great municipal literary happenings. The craziest one of the year is my being asked to participate in Festival America, an international literary festival that takes place in Vincennes, which coincides with the French publication of In the Cage, by the renowned Parisian publishing house, Albin Michel.

I’ve been working on translations of both In the Cage & Debris with Janique Jouin-de Laurens, and my editor there is Francis Geffard. They’ve published translations of writers like Donald Ray Pollock, Marlon James, and Stephen King, and are a formidable literary force in Europe. So, I’m very interested in seeing how the French receive my work. I’ve heard only good things about their passion for good writing, and for their enthusiasm for reading literary crime and the like, and novels authored by those that I truly admire and have looked up to over the years.

Otherwise, I’m some chapters into the next novel, and will be back in the short story tumbler soon enough. It took a lot of time and energy to get the first novel to where it got to, and I’ve been busy with some prize juries and other endeavours, but it is time to cut my teeth on some new writing, and lots of it.

Take care. KH

Hello errbody, and happy new year. I’ll likely put up something more about the year that was 2017 and some of the things that happened, and that are germinating for 2018 in writing-related life. But for now, here is just a quick bit of news that happened over the holidays, when most were busy doing things or trying to hide out in their hobbit holes.

I got this fine review in ZYZZYVA, one of the most respected literary journals in the US, based in San Francisco. You can read the review in its entirely here. Thanks the most to reviewer Bjorn Svendsen (and to the mag), who said about In the Cage: 

“Genre fiction is often criticized for its recurring tropes and boilerplate plots, but Kevin Hardcastle’s novel proves otherwise. In the Cage is both fresh and haunting. It is a novel of grace and brutality, and the balance between them.”

I’ve long been trying to get US readers to check out my work, especially those who like the writing of, say, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, and so forth. It’s a tough go to get your book into people’s hands in the mess of novels published each year, so this is a nice surprise and a welcome happening right as we move into another year and look forward to some things that’ll be going on in 2018.

More to come soon. Thanks again, and happy 2018. May all of your dreams take flight of the wings of a pegacorn…

KH