An anonymous writer stays up late into the night penning personal and inappropriate letters to a local public official. A new father and cook at a Montreal café chronicles the tyrannical rise of a new manager. An eccentric young student, in trying to carve out a space for herself, deals an existential blow to her roommate. Dead Flowers is a collection of stories featuring characters who have become estranged from the trajectory of their lives, yet must grapple with youth, love, isolation, drugs, friendship and the changing of seasons. These are stories of peripheral tragedies, moral ambivalence and compromise, chance and how we are shaped by what finds us.

Sunshine Coast, BC, author Alex Laidlaw’s writing has been featured in SubTerrain, Event, Cosmonaut Avenue and the Hart House Review among other literary magazines. He holds a BA in literature from the University of Victoria. Laidlaw is interested in the intersection of arts, literature and historical narratives.

Alex Laidlaw's profile page

• Short-listed, ReLit Awards for Short Fiction

“Enigmatic ideas craftily underlie a direct style.”

<i>Kirkus Reviews</i>

“An absolutely remarkable collection of eight short stories by Canadian author Alexander Laidlaw. These tales had the power to draw me in right away. I felt completely captivated…entirely powerful, the prose stunning and deeply thought provoking...A beautiful collection of shorts and I highly recommend checking it out.”

Sean Loughran, AvocadoDiaries.com

“Dead Flowers is fascinating to the very last page, and highly recommended for connoisseurs of original fiction.”

Susan Bethany, <i>Midwest Book Review</i>