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A little while ago I got word from Nick Mount, acclaimed University of Toronto literature professor and former fiction editor of The Walrus, that he had been asked to curate a bunch of short stories for Internazionale, an Italian magazine that collects the best journalism in the world for each issue. They print a special issue every year dedicated to the art and press from a certain country, and it was Canada’s turn this time around. So, Nick contributed to the issue by selecting the best stories that he’d come by over the year to be included in the issue.

Luckily for me, my story Montana Border was one of those that Nick chose for Internazionale, and the issue was sent out to contributors this week. It should available at certain news stands and in digital form as of today.

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There are some excellent authors in the issue, including fellow Biblioasis author and Giller Prize finalist Samuel Archibald. Otherwise, there are stories by: Mona Awad, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Sean Michaels, Zsuzsi Gartner, Deirdre Dore, Lisa Moore, Naomi Harris, and Dakota McFadzean. That is some good company right there.

The translation was done by Matteo Colombo, and those magical illustrations were done by Gipi. Editors Giulia Zoli and Monica Paolucci were the good folks that acquired the story for Internazionale and set it all up. They are all heroes…

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The other thing that happened is that Debris ended up on a list on the CBC Books site, which included thirty award-winning titles from 2016. Debris was published in fall of 2015, but won the Trillium Book Award this past summer. It may or may not be the only time I end up on a list with the likes of Paul Beatty, Colson Whitehead, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Han Kang, so that was not too shabby.

You can check out the full list by clicking this line. Giv’er…

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That’s all I got today. So long for now.

KH

 

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A little while ago, Biblioasis submitted Debris for The Story Prize, a US prize for the best collection of stories that year. If you are surprised at how my book is eligible for an American prize, well, so was I. But, it was a sneak move by Biblioasis, likely due to their proximity to and magical knowledge of US publishing and whatnot, especially in the northeast. Turns out that this prize is for a book published in the US that year, and Debris was technically published south of the border on February 9th, 2016, and has a US distributor in Consortium. So yeah…

The director of The Story Prize, Larry Dark, welcomed blog posts on a bunch of things from the nominated authors, and I wrote one. About how “Nobody will really believe you can pull this off.” Some folks have read it already, but you can click here to check it out if you are interested in such ramblings.

The finalist will be announced in January 2017, and the winner at a fancy ceremony in March. This is likely a fairly long shot for me, but at least we are able to give it a go. Thanks to Biblioasis for knowing secrets that other people don’t.

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Another thing I did was write a blog post for IFOA 2016. I was asked to be a delegate, as mentioned in an earlier post, and part of that entailed the writing of a post on one of the events that I saw at IFOA. I did one about my editor, John Metcalf, based on his In Conversation event on the last day of the fest. Metcalf spoke with Randy Boyagoda, an acclaimed writer and professor who knew his stuff about Metcalf’s first new book in 26 years, The Museum at the End of the World, and about the man’s legacy in Canadian letters.

You can read that blog post now, where I rant about how important Metcalf has been to CanLit, despite his deliberate method of avoiding the pressures of the market, and accepting your lot as a literary writer with a readership that will be diametrically opposed to your skills and talents. A few days before this, I’d been in discussion with another John (of the Irving type), who advised me on how to try and actually make a novel into a success over some beers and porkchop at a fancy place. So, both of those conversations, from two very wise Johns, counterbalanced each other hilariously. Nonetheless, you’ll see by reading my piece on Metcalf that I believe his approach to writing is justified, but that it doesn’t stop some of his authors from achieving success under his guidance. And that Metcalf’s contributions to literature should be considered as a very impressive accomplishment.

Anyways, check it out here if you like.

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I just wanted to share those two blogs on this blog for posterity, and I hope that some of you read them and they are not crap. Nonetheless, I will write more when I have more news about In the Cage, or about anything else worth mentioning. Until then, thanks and please continue to believe in your dreams…

KH

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As you can see, I was actually invited to another festival, Wordsfest London, and was fortunate enough to spend the weekend there and to be paired up in an event with André Alexis, Giller Prize Winner. I managed to get there for the 10am event on the Saturday, and not swear too much nor fall through the glass table in front of us. So I call that a success. The moderator, Joel Burton, had read our books closely and managed to find some common ground between two very different styles of fiction writing. We talked about such things as the meaning of home in our work, what characters will do to protect each other and what little they might have, the role of class and marginalization, and about how André had Hermes and Apollo drinking Steamwhistle while I should, and WILL be sponsored by delicious Budweiser.

They did video this thing, so if I can find such a thing I’ll update this post with a link to the event.

The festival was going strong in it’s third year, and the turnout for all of the events was impressive. No doubt because of visiting writers and artists like André, as well as Emma Donoghue (who called London home for much of her life in Canada), Douglas Gibson, Teva Harrison, Mariko Tamaki, George Elliot Clarke, & Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In any case, it was only my second invitation to the main card of a literary festival, after being at the Wild Writers Festival in Waterloo last year. If I can keep up this trend of not ruining them entirely, perhaps I’ll be back…

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In the week or so before going to London, I was a delegate for the International Festival of Authors, with its many events and readings going on at the Toronto harbourfront. I’d recently been down to St. Catharines, Ontario as part of the IFOA Lit on Tour program, joining an event with cartoonist Nina Bunjevac. All of these were my first experiences at IFOA as anything but an attendee. All of it went well and I was glad to be part of the fest as both a travellin’ author and a delegate. You can check out my Twitter feed for the events I went to and covered for IFOA, and shortly there will be a blog post on their site that I wrote, based on the In Conversation with John Metcalf event on the final day of the fest (excellent Hardcastle event photography art appears above).

As most people know, Metcalf is my editor at Biblioasis, and said some amazing things that all writers might take to heart, such as: “If you think what you’re writing is sellable, you’re demented.” With that in mind, I gave him the last pages of edits for my forthcoming novel, In the Cage, to be published in fall 2017 by Biblioasis. There might still be a few minor changes to be made, but that thing is pretty well done with. Considering I first wrote a draft of it in 2010, and rewrote it two or three times while turning down the suck as a writer (likely due to nailing down my voice and writing skills through short stories), it is nice to see that book has come this far. I knew there was a good novel in there, but it took some years, and some surgical editing by John, to get it to where I could clearly see the bones of the book again and build it back up from that.

So yeah, that was a good end to a great festival. And my blog about it should be up very soon. In the meantime, you can see the already-published blog posts by other delegates who drank less IFOA lounge beer, like author Nancy Jo Cullen, by clicking on this whole line.

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That is all that I got for now. Thanks to all of the IFOA and Wordsfest London people, especially Geoffrey Taylor, Josh Lambier, Catherine Coreno, Zviko Mhakayakora, Rebecca Hallquist, Riley Watson, Joel Burton, Nina Bunjevac, Jon Eben Field, and DEAN.

So long for now.

Hardcastle

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On the heels of my triumphant return to Midwich, Ontario, I have been asked to do some other readings at a couple of festival type deals outside of Toronto, where I live and do most of my weird behaviour. As illustrated by the majestic screencap above, I will be participating in IFOA as part of the travellin’ show that goes all over the province. So, I’ll be reading on October 15th at 3:00pm in St. Catharines, Ontario, at the St. Catharines Library. I’ll be out there with acclaimed cartoonist/illustrator Nina Bunjevac. Click on this line for more event details. Thanks a bunch to the IFOA for inviting me, and to the Festival of Readers and the Niagara Artists Centre for running the event. You are all cool.

I have also been asked to be a delegate at IFOA, meaning that I can go to any and all events and readings and heckle people that I know who are up on stage. Especially if they topple off the stage in their chair, like leather jacket-clad stuntman Andrew F. Sullivan (WOTS HIGHLIGHT). Likely though, I will be listening to things and writing about them for IFOA, and it is actually an honour to be asked and to be given some level of responsibility as a person.

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The next thing I’ll be at is Wordsfest London, reading at November 5th at 10am with Giller Prize winner André Alexis, and that is not too shabby. You can also see by the poster above that there is a boatload of excellent writers that they’ve locked up for the fest. I’ll likely be up in there all weekend, taking in the readings and talks. If you happen to be in the area, or would like to get yourself to that place, I will be around. Thanks to Joshua Lambier and all of the other people involved for inviting me down.

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That’s about all for now. Check out the links and the events and please spread the word if you can. In the meantime, take a gander at the social media for Wordsfest London and for IFOA St. Catherines/Lit On Tour/Festival of Readers.

More to come soon, regarding novels and whatnot. But that’ll do for now. Cheers. KH

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About a week ago I went back to the homeland and read a bunch of stuff in front of a good amount of people, as part of the Read Local event put on by the Written Word Committee, and supported by the Midland Cultural Centre. My publisher, Biblioasis, was also a co-sponsor of the event so that I could get up there and read some hillbilly mayhem tales. I didn’t know how it would go, as many of my friends have up and left that area of the country and I don’t get there all that much. But, the good folk I know that live in the region came out and filled that room at the MCC. And it turned out to be an excellent day.

Thanks the most to Jennifer Kerr and Kristi Presse of the Written Word for setting this all up, and our old family friend, and acclaimed poet, Roger Bell, who got the whole thing started. I have always had a bit of a contentious relationship with that place that I came from, but over time I’ve realized that there’s a lot of it in me and in these stories, and I’m glad that I got a chance to give back to the community and people who’ve seen me try to scribble things down since I was wee. I was humbled by the response to the event, and by all the people who participated, organized, and attended it. We also sold out of all copies of Debris that were sent north. So, it was a damn good day, all in all.

I’ll have more news about things to come. The novel, In the Cage, is done for major edits and very nearly done for minor edits as well. That sonofabitch will be published in fall 2017. I’ll also be doing another thing or two readings or events-wise, and I’ll post about them in the next few days.

Until then, thanks to all the Simcoe people that supported me last weekend, and to everyone who keeps reading the work. Cheers. KH

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If you happen to find yourself up in North Simcoe County on September 10th, you might brave the streets of Midland to see a bunch of writers do their thing all up and down the main strip in town. The Written Word committee, operating out of the Midland Cultural Centre, has organized a day-long reading series with some excellent local writers and literary folk, like Roger Bell, along with some other authors who you might know from about the greater CanLit scene, like Julie Joosten and Bianca Lakoseljac, who probably have some kind of link to the area.

Those good people of the MCC have also asked that I return to the place that spawned a bunch of stories about hillbilly mayhem and crime. As a result, I will be the headlining reader on the day.

So, if you are one of the twelve people that read this blog, and happen to be up in that land in a couple weeks, come by and see some writers read some of their writing. I’ll update this post with website and event pages and the like as they show up, and any other informations that might be of use.

Update: Here is the full list of authors participating in the event, and where and when they are reading at…

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Until then, thanks a bunch to Roger Bell, Jennifer Kerr, and the rest of the Written Word and MCC staff involved in getting this up and running. Also, thanks to my publisher, Biblioasis, for getting me up there and making sure that copies of Debris make the trip as well. I’m told that they’ll be on sale through Georgian Bay Books, the last bastion of the book trade in Midland.

More to come…

Hardcastle

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After an interesting week of going to three different awards ceremonies, something magical happened. Last Wednesday, I got to attend a fancy and very heartening evening put on by the OMDC. And at the end, my collection of stories, Debris, won the English Language Trillium Book Award.

I was lucky enough to have my editor John Metcalf there to receive the award with me, and got to thank him for finding my short story, Old Man Marchuk, a couple years ago, and calling me up to see if I had more. That led to this book, and will lead to my first published novel, In the Cage, due for publication in spring 2017. John changed my life with that call, and this book, as did my publisher, Biblioasis. This was their first Trillium finalist, and we managed to make it count.

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Massive thanks to the Trillium jury: Cordelia Strube, Steven W. Beattie, and Rob Winger. I figured it would always be a challenge to land three people who were in tune with my writing at the same time, but the planets aligned here. And I’m well aware how much that falls to chance. You are all heroes…

I had a lot of support in that room, and elsewhere, and I have to sincerely thank them all for that. I also got to hang out with fellow Trillium and Danuta Gleed Runner-Up, Andrew Forbes, who was up for both with his excellent short story collection, What You Need, from Invisible Publishing. We’ve known each other awhile, and sat and sweat together through those awards. That made the whole deal easier. As did sitting with some other friends, and a certain one to my left who was possibly far more pumped than any human has ever been when they called my name.

As I mentioned, me and Forbes also runnered-up to the Danuta Gleed Literary Award the Friday before. That prize went to Heather O’Neill, of Heather O’Neill fame. It seemed fitting that we both took that second place spot and had a drink during and after. Again, it’s a roll of the dice just to make those shortlists, and you need more than a little luck in the juries to get there, so I thank the folks of The Writers’ Union of Canada, and the excellent jury they put together. It was an honour to be in that company.

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The other award event I was at took place the day before the Trillium, and that was the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. The winner for the fiction shortlist was Irina Kovalyova, for her short story collection, Specimen. I didn’t expect to be up for this prize either, and I want to thank my friends who knew about and told me about submitting my book (which I did while hanging out in the Vancouver airport), and all the people at Kobo for giving us a fancy place to attend and drink drinks at for that evening.

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The other thing that happened, that I didn’t get a chance to talk about yet, was that I was on the radio with film critic Richard Crouse, on Newstalk 1010. I got waylaid by a subway fire that caused rush hour mayhem in downtown Toronto, but I made it in to talk about Debris and some other pop culture and media topics, as guests do on the show. I was on with Steve Michaels, who is the lead in Return to Grace, an acclaimed Elvis stage biopic, and with the venerable Canadian comedian, Simon Rakoff. If you’d like to check that show out, you can find it by clicking this link. My asshole late show-up bit starts at 21:27.

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It’s been a hell of a week, and past few years, but I’ve got a lot of work to do yet. The novel edits will be finished soon, and that’ll all start up as far as production goes. In the meanwhile, I very much appreciate everyone who has read my work and has sent me messages and correspondences. I’m getting back to you all in some form or another, but know that they all meant a great deal to me. I am better for knowing all of you weirdos. Cheers.

Hardcastle

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I got word about something magical last week from Dan Wells, my publisher at Biblioasis, but I had to keep it close to the vest until today. Turns out that this collection of stories I wrote, Debris, is a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. The official announcement was made this morning, and you can read about the award and the other excellent finalists by clicking this line.

Otherwise, here’s the full list of Trillium finalists (for the English language):

• Lynn Crosbie, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, House of Anansi Press
• Andrew Forbes, What You Need, Invisible Publishing
• Kevin Hardcastle, Debris, Biblioasis
• Robert Hough, The Man Who Saved Henry Morgan, House of Anansi Press
• Janette Platana, A Token of My Affliction, Tightrope Books
• Karen Solie, The Road In Is Not The Same Road Out, House of Anansi Press

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Over the last two months, Debris got shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. That’s a pretty good late run for a book of stories that a lot of great people supported but that I figured did what it did, and that was the all of it. I’m very grateful to everyone responsible for giving this book enough of a chance to get it this far. It isn’t a book that makes a lot of sense on the traditional CanLit landscape, but it made a lot of sense to me, and hopefully to a few more people that may get turned on to it after these nominations.

So, thank you to the OMDC and the Trillium jury. You are champions to me and I would gladly smite your enemies. Otherwise, congratulations to all the other Trillium Book Award finalists. This ain’t a bad Wednesday.

Cheers.

Hardcastle

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Yesterday, The Writer’s Union of Canada announced this years shortlist for the prestigious Danuta Gleed Literary Award. As their release says: “The Award recognizes the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2015 in the English language.”

That book I wrote a while ago, Debris, is on that list. That’s alright.

Anyways, despite my day of social media nonsense, I figured I’d put this up on here for the dozen or so people that have ever looked at this WordPress site. After getting on the shortlist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for fiction a few weeks back, I was as happy as a writer can reasonably get to see that the book got this recognition from the Danuta Gleed jury: Shauna Singh Baldwin, Barry Dempster, and Dora Dueck.

Here’s what the jury had to say about Debris, published by the mighty Biblioasis:

Debris is a spare and shadow-drenched book, the sentences well-wrought, the voice never less than distinctive. His characters include a cage fighter being tracked down by the Hell’s Angels, a night clerk at a seedy hotel who makes moonshine whiskey and a gas contract salesman wearing out his shoes in a number of Alberta towns. These are tough-talking men who advertise their misery like a kind of nakedness. Strangely, the result of all this suffering and violence is a beauty that at times almost takes your breath away.

On top of that, I was real happy to see ol’ dirty Andrew Forbes get on the shortlist, for his collection What You Need, put out in the spring of 2015 by Invisible Publishing. That is a damn good set of stories and I always felt the book never got the attention that it deserved. So it goes. Nonetheless, Forbes made it from the mean streets of Peterborough all the way to the DG shortlist, and that is a good thing for everybody.

The full list of shortlisters is as follows (notice there are fancy people):

Gerard Beirne, In a Time of Drought and Hunger, Oberon Press
Andrew Forbes, What You Need, Invisible Publishing
Hugh Graham, Last Words, Exile Editions
Kevin Hardcastle, Debris, Biblioasis
Heather O’Neill, Daydreams of Angels, HarperCollins Publisher

The winner is gonna be announced at the Canadian Writers’ Summit (June 15–19) at Harbourfront. I don’t know if that means I have to put a clean shirt and tie on, but we’ll see…

If you want to read more about the Danuta Gleed, and the excellent people behind it (including Ms. Gleed herself), you can click this line and get to the actual press release from the TWUC.

Otherwise, thanks to everyone who spread the word on this yesterday, and who woke my ass up outta bed at the crack of eleven o’clock. It was news worth getting up for. Cheers.

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Last friday I got word that Debris was reviewed on Daybreak Alberta, a morning show on CBC Radio One that focuses on arts and culture, hosted by Russell Bowers. Acclaimed author Angie Abdou, who I met through other writers and social media and regular life, is often a guest on the show when it comes to discussing new books that include something of note with regards to the province. She is also a hero, because she took the time to give my book a close read and review it on the show.

According to Angie, the book wasn’t really all that bad. But, you can hear it direct, in her words, if you click this line and listen to the recording of it all. The whole thing is about seven minutes, and it contains words like Hemingwayesque and Talented and Drunkards. Give it a listen if you like.

Sincere thanks to Angie for all her efforts on this. Even if you want to slap me with a fish, you should still listen to the show just to celebrate people like her that put in the time to support other writers and the books they wrote.

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I also just saw today that the book was reviewed in The Malahat Review, by Jamie Dopp, an English professor at the University of Victoria. He had some kind things to say about the stories and about the writing itself, such as:

“The stories are told with careful precision, free of authorial judgment, in prose that reminded me of the understated lyricism of later Thomas McGuane or of David Adams Richards. As in McGuane or Richards, there are subtly redemptive qualities to the stories, but any redemption is hard-earned, and begins with a clear-eyed attention to the world that is.”

Of all the writers I like, you don’t hear a lot about McGuane, and he is pretty goddamn good at writing, so I thank Mr. Dopp for this part of the review and for all the other parts as well. I’d also like to thank the Malahat folks. The oldest story in my book, To have to wait, was published in The Malahat Review, Issue 177, a few years back. They nominated the story for the 2012 Journey Prize, and it ended up as a finalist. That was probably the first time anyone started to know about my writing in any significant way, and I’m glad to see the book that story ended up in being covered by the journal that took a chance on it.

Read the full review right here, through the internet. Otherwise, you can find the whole thing in print in The Malahat Review, Issue 194. It will be in there somewhere, along with work by the likes of Kate Cayley and Steven Heighton.

That’s the latest, friends. Happy Wednesday. So long for now…

Hardcastle