Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2006)

Best Fiction of the Year, OttawaXpress

A Small Dog Barking is a startling array of stories, diverse in theme and far-reaching in their breadth of subject matter. Ranging in setting from teenage drinking parties to the apocalyptic landscape of a near-future Western civilization, this collection is both intensely personal and universal. Despite the sometimes extreme and alien landscapes these characters inhabit, there is always the motif of adults navigating the riparian paths of longing, desire, love, and redemption. This new collection represents Strandquist at his most daring to date.

Praise for A Small Dog Barking & Other Stories:

"The writing is so beautiful, the language shining, enlightening a sacramental universe ... It is not the smallness, nor the dog, but the barking that is important, the raging against the coming of the night." (Prairie Fire)

"Strandquist's prose is spare and precise, studded with startling, evocative images. ... Strandquist has a wild imagination and an awe-inspiring mastery of language and form ... A Small Dog Barking is an excellent collection, well worth reading and rereading." (Books in Canada)

"Strandquist once again proves he's incapable of writing a dull sentence." (The Vancouver Sun)

Robert Strandquist's work has appeared in subTerrain, The Capilano Review, Prairie Fire, Fiddlehead, Grain, Event, and Canadian Fiction Magazine. Mr. Strandquist has an MFA from the University of British Columbia and has received several writing awards, including a Canadian Authors' Association award for poetry. He grew up in Nelson, BC and now resides in Vancouver. Strandquist has one novel, The Dreamlife of Bridges, and two collections of short stories, A Small Dog Barking and The Inanimate World, published by Anvil Press.

Robert Strandquist's profile page