Richard Kelly Kemick, author of Hello, Horse (Aug 6, 2024), will be appearing at the Calgary Wordfest’s Imaginairium Festival’s event, “Turtle Island Reads.” Richard will be joined by a number of fellow writers, including Carleigh Baker, Shashi Bhat, Fanny Britt, Sig Burwash, and Conor Kerr. At turns edgy, humorous, experimental, complex, and raw, the tales told by these cross-country stars of contemporary Canadian storytelling speak to our longing for community and connection. Books will be made available for purchase by Owl’s Nest Books.
The event will take place on Thursday, October 17 at 7:30PM.
Tickets and more details here.
Grab Hello, Horse here!
Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives.
A teenager’s job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother’s death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.
Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better and for worse.
Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod (also on audiobook), which takes readers undercover at one of the world’s largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s 2019 Award for Best Short Story. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
