As of this week, Toutes les chances qu’on se donne, the French language translation of my short story collection, Debris, has officially been published in France by Éditions Albin Michel. I’ve posted about this earlier, as I’ve had little in the way of book news while waiting to see what happens with the novel I finished last year in the pandy (County Road Six). But, it has been great to see readers with the book in their hands over the last few days, and to see some positive reviews and social media posts by readers who came across my work a couple years back, with the translation of In the Cage as Dans la Cage, also by Albin Michel.

If there is anyone you know who digs short stories and would like to read them in French, this collection might speak to them more than the novel, given the variety of tales and the kind of terrain you can cover in eleven stories, as opposed to one continues longer narrative. I’ve already seen some kind words written about this one, from readers who liked the novel and those who had a harder time wrestling with the subject matter of Dans la Cage. I always knew that a book about an MMA fighter might be a challenge for some, but it was the only way I could tell that story as needed, so I knew that it’d be interesting to absorb the responses that readers had as they went on that journey. Nonetheless, there were a bunch of readers who loved the writing, but felt that particular story wasn’t for them. With the collection, I’m hoping that the variety and range of those stories will help draw them to the work and to at least a few of those tales. That seems to be the case, so far…

I have to thank the shit out of Francis Geffard, the publisher at Albin Michel who found my work and has championed it there. I don’t think I quite realized the gravity of his role, and that publishing house’s role, in book publishing in Europe, but it has been an amazing turn of events for a few books published by an independent press in Canada (Bibioasis).

Mega thanks also go to Carol Menville, who also edited my work at Albin Michel, and to Janique Jouin de Laurens, who translated both book and asked many key questions about pickup trucks, urinal troughs, and prairie grain silos, all of which led to getting the right words in the right places for French readers.

You can find Toutes les chances qu’on se donne on Albin Michel’s site, which links to the booksellers that carry it. It’s also available through Indigo/Chapters in Canada, for those French readers who are over on this side of the Atlantic.