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.

Q&A with Andrew Hood at National Post

Last month it was all poetry, this month the National Post has gone ahead and 'asked some of Canada's top short fiction writers – both emerging and established – to opine on the form.' Andrew Hood is first to take questions:

Q: Is there a quintessential short story, and if so, what is it?

A: Probably not (says Hood). Short stories get up to so much, so that a quintessential story by, say, Willa Cather, has no bearing on a quintessential Borges yarn. So Borges kicked this one door down in me, and then Munro booted down another, and Amy Hempel found her way in through an open window, and Flannery O’Connor pretty much burnt my whole house down.

The full interview is here.

Three is a charm!

The media can’t get enough of award-winning author Andrew Hood.
The weekend edition of The Globe & Mail included the Top Five of 2008 by First Fiction editor Jim Bartley. Hood’s offbeat short story collection, Pardon our Monsters, ranked 3rd.

Jim Bartley writes: “From geeky pubescence to the storms of adulthood. Andrew Hood taps emotional aquifers. As you sense the reservoirs in yourself, he unexpectedly makes them gush.  One or two of these stories rival our best: transparent conductors of Hood’s wisdom and our human plight.”

Congratulations Andrew!