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 the recipient of numerous awards, including two National Magazine Awards, an Alberta Literary Award, and the Norma Epstein Award. His debut poetry collection, Caribou Run, was published to critical acclaim in 2016. His writing has appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, including the Walrus, the New Quarterly, This Magazine, the Fiddlehead, Numéro Cinq, and Taddle Creek. He divides his time between Calgary, AB, and Rossland, BC. I Am Herod is his first book-length work of non-fiction.

Richard Kelly Kemick's profile page

Praise for Hello, Horse

"The animal world interacts with the human one in confounding and sometimes wondrous ways in Kemick’s first collection, which abounds with the poet’s sideways, observational writing."

—Globe and Mail

"The tales here mix whimsy, weirdness, lust, and Canadian politics, bringing to mind George Saunders and the slackers from Wayne’s World . . . He has a penchant for alternating between things familiar and bizarre . . . Provocative, entertaining short fiction."

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Restless, exuberant, meandering, funny, inventive, and really quite bonkers . . . Either Kemick is one of those rare, savant-like authors whose outpouring is naturally (and enviably) stylish, or he tempers what seems to be a natural, baroque extravagance with careful, word-by-word revision. Whatever the case, readers will notice—and ought to appreciate—those sentences . . . All in all, Hello, Horse gallops and canters, dazzles and makes a splash. Prepare to be wowed."

—The Miramichi Reader

"Overall, Kemick has balanced visually rich absurdity . . . and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair. This is an unapologetically unique slice of Canadiana."

—The BC Review

"Rollicking and acrobatic, guffaw-inducing, a bit excessive, and an Exhibit A of the natural born writer. What’s not to love?"

—Brett Josef Grubisic, The BC Review

"[Richard Kelly Kemick's] a mad genius. The stories are based on wacky premises . . . yet they are gorgeously rendered and surprisingly poignant."

—Caroline Adderson, Scout Book Club

"The year 2024 has Richard Kelly Kemick, whose wild imagination and fresh insights cast a spell in Hello, Horse; every entrancing story casts off in a different direction, with a genuine 'wait? what?!' moment you did not see coming."

—Susan Grimbly, Zed: Zoomer Book Club

"Richard Kelly Kemick’s Hello, Horse is wildly original and filled with astonishing moments. A wonderful collection that resonates long after reading."

—Don Gillmor, author of Breaking and Entering

"Hello, Horse is beguiling and wondrous, with talking dogs and nuns at the end of the world, images that linger with strange pleasure; Richard Kelly Kemick is a stellar wordsmith."

—Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Burn Man

Praise for Richard Kelly Kemick

"Kemick convincingly wrests the sublime from the trivial. He manages, astonishingly, a tone both earnest and ironic, with details and insights that are lively, unexpected, funny, and poignant."

—National Magazine Awards

“Richard Kemick spends a summer in Alberta's Bible Belt where it may be easier to find God than a vegetarian meal. There, he confronts age-old questions about belief with near-miraculous freshness, honesty, and humour. A deeply personal investigation of the blurred border between faith and imagination.”

—Marcello Di Cintio, author of Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers

“Laugh out loud funny . . . Kemick’s own faith or lack thereof is . . . one of the deeper themes that courses beneath the comedy.”

—Calgary Herald

“Wisecracking, earnest, and charmingly obsessive, Kemick introduces himself here as a poet who believes in something larger than his own self, and so is a poet to watch.”

—Nick Thran