As I compiled my first short story collection this winter, thanks to a grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, I was pleased to have a couple of new stories published in print and online.
“Welcome to the Margins” — about an aging librarian obsessed with marginalia — was published in The Humber Literary Review, my first time in its pages. (The full issue is available to read free online for a limited time — so check out my story and all the other great pieces in HLR Volume 11, Issue 2.)
“Social Animals” — about a bully brother who discovers how his family really feels about him — was published in DarkWinter Literary Magazine, a newish online magazine that offers prose and poetry with a dark twist. It’s always available to read free, so check out my story and get lost in all the twisty pieces published this year.
I wrote short fiction for adults in my youth and published about a dozen stories in literary journals in the 1990s. (The New Quarterly, one of the few greats that survived the decades since, was actually new back then!)
After I had children and read a thousand great kids’ books, I started writing for young people. And I still do. I treasure the time I spend in schools and libraries teaching creative writing to young people — because my own kids are long grown and I need the inspiration of energetic modern youth.
But I also write for adults these days. Ten years ago, I wrote a story for Tesseracts Seventeen: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast, and I’ve written a couple of stories a year since then. I’ve published about half of them in literary journals.
This fall and winter, I compiled 18 of my recent stories into my first collection, “Alone in the World,” which I’m now sending out into the world, submitting the manuscript to a few of my favourite Canadian publishers. Fingers crossed that it finds a good home.
In the meantime, I’ll keep submitting individual pieces to literary journals.
If you also write short fiction, check out my Canadian LitMag List and submit something today.
Catherine Austen 