Description
Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Award for Short Fiction
Longlisted for the Relit Awards The young occupy a territory of their own, a foreign land inaccessible to nostalgia and regret. In these eloquent, arresting stories, an assortment of exotic youth send tremors through the foundations of the established world: four summer students interrupt a once-famous artist's retreat from society; a naive job seeker shakes a frustrated employee out of middle-aged complacency; and a high school student's safety is threatened by her teacher's passion for the Riel Rebellion. Unsentimental, often funny, rarely nostalgic, each story of The Young in Their Country is a complete world.
About the author
Contributor Notes
RICHARD CUMYN is the author of nine books of fiction. A past fiction editor of The Antigonish Review, he has been published widely in Canada in such literary journals as The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Grain, PRISM International and Event. He has been shortlisted twice for the ReLit Award, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award (essay), and was long-listed for the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. His screen adaptation of Susan Kerslake's novel, Penumbra, won a 1998 Linda Joy Media Arts Award. He has taught fiction at the Maritime Writers' Workshop, read his work in the Dalhousie University, St. Jerome's (Waterloo) and Lorenzo (UNBSJ) reading series and has been short-term writer in residence at St. Mary's University. He lives in Edmonton.
Editorial Reviews
"He is one of our finest story writers: exacting, surprising, deftly attuned both to language and to character, tough-minded and large-hearted at the same time - often within the same sentence." - Steven Heighton, author of Afterlands
"Each of the stories in this powerful collection is a genuine surprise, unfolding with agility and grace through its unusual characters, unpredictable events, sharply distilled dialogue, and impeccably precise description." - Diane Schoemperlen, author of At a Loss for Words
"Richard Cumyn is a writer who doesn't like to be boxed in. The stories collected here resist pigeonholing. . . "- Quill & Quire
"Cumyn's great talent as a writer is how he mines ordinary situations to reveal a skewed vision of the world." -Steven Mayoff, Carte Blanche Best of 2010
". . . the prose and characterization are so good that I trust them at least as much as myself." - Literary Review of Canada
"Cumyn has absolute control over the very clear and clever narration of his characters, and can draw them into madness and violence without also drawing his prose into histrionics." - Antigonish Review