“The Stampede” was published in 2010 in Clark-Nova’s anthology Writing Without Direction: 101/2 short stories by Canadian authors under 30. “That Savage Water” was published in the Maple Tree Literary Supplement in 2011. “A Severed Arm” was published in Lies with Occasional Truth in 2008. “Les 3 Chevaliers” was published in Pax Americana in 2008. “Crawling with Thieves” was published in The Southernmost Review in 2009. “The Vagrant Borders of Kashmir” was published in Nether Magazine from Mumbai, India, 2012. “Soft Coral, Sinking Pearl” was published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal from Hong Kong in 2012. “A Feast of Bear” was published in Jonathan in 2012. “From the Lookout There Are Trees” was published in the anthology Everything Is So Political in 2013. “A Fire in the Clearing” and “The Pigeons of Peshawar” appeared, respectively, in the 2013 and 2014 Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology–Book 3 and 4, and in ELQ/Exile: The Literary Quarterly 37.3 and 39.1. “Jesus Very Thin and Hungry” appeared in ELQ/Exile: The Literary Quarterly 38.1. A hearty thank-you to the editors of these publications.
A special thanks to the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council, without whose support this collection would have taken decades.
For those teachers of risk, craft and imagination: Larry Garber, Rosemary Sullivan, Paul Quarrington, Sarah Kathryn York, E. Martin Nolan, Graham Arnold, Danielle Van Bakel, Brooke Lockyer, Kate Jenks, Catriona Wright, Jillian Butler, Andrew MacDonald, Michael Collins, Eric Overton, Josip Novakovich, Andrew Battershill, Troy Cunningham, Claire McCague and Jeff Parker. This collection is the brighter because of you.
Effusive thanks to the Exile Editions family whose generosity and enthusiasm are boundless.
Ultimate thanks to my partner, Sergio Beristain, who believed before I did.