Jill
Sexsmith
Jill Sexsmith's imagination goes where no imagination has gone before. Sexsmith's story collection breaks all the shackles and runs free with its heart in its fist. Sure-footed, really funny, poignant and wise. Here is the love-child collection of George Saunders and Joy Williams. Move over Miranda July, there’s a new voice in town.
— Lisa Moore, author of February
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The Collection
Nominated for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, McNally Robinson Book of the Year and the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.
The off-kilter heroes and heroines in this debut collection of short stories find themselves camping beneath elm trees set to be felled; seeking refuge in a spare bedroom carved out of an opal mine; commiserating with a New York City carriage horse.
As her characters struggle with relationships, Sexsmith deftly cuts through raw and intimate moments to show how strangely impervious to their desperate circumstances people can be. Witty and unapologetic, the stories in Somewhere a Long and Happy Life Probably Awaits You traverse the everyday and the unexpected to delightful effect.
Reviews
Sexsmith's deft, penetrating debut collection embraces deadpan absurdity. These 11 stories showcase impressive confidence and skill. ...the stories remain of a high caliber right through to the end.
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Short Story Collections Not To Be Missed This Summer
...Jill Sexsmith writes offbeat and funny characters who do weird and sometimes outrageous things. But they exist for more than a cheap laugh (though there are plenty of jokes).
But a tree in a Jill Sexsmith story isn’t like a tree in some other story. Sometimes the unexpected happens: in fact, often.
Somewhere a Long and Happy Life Probably Awaits You is a combination of magic realism and sharply observed characters that will take you to a very special place where the two are artfully mingled.
About
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Jill Sexsmith won the Writers’ Union of Canada short prose competition. Her first story collection ---- Somewhere a Long and Happy Life Probably Awaits You ---- was nominated for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Her work
has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as The Walrus and Fiddlehead. She has an MFA from the University of British Columbia.