The Cloaca Has Landed

Andrew Hood was in Ottawa recently to launch his monstrously good second book of stories, The Cloaca, published by the very fresh and infectiously unpretentious Invisible Publishing. On a day that The Cloaca received some good critical attention from Phillip Marchand in National Post, Hood gave a short reading at Collected Works Bookstore and answered questions from the madding crowd.

Asked who he's reading, Hood mentioned Flannery O'Connor ('for the violence in her stories') and Amy Hempel. Asked if the stories in his second book were easier or harder to write than the bunch in Pardon Our Monsters, Hood confessed writing has got a lot harder to do, scratched his head, and said some things that cannot be printed here. Asked how he knows when he's finished with a story, Hood answered he knows he's done when he can't take anything more out of a story, without it falling apart. The folks at Véhicule Press wish the inimitable Hoodly all the readers he deserves and then some.