What does it mean to be a nobody? How does it feel to be a somebody? And why is it so hard to be ourselves? These are the questions at the heart of Nobodies, a darkly comedic collection in which a neurotic teenager experiences his first rejection; a stalker emails her favourite movie star; a young man wages war against God; and an aspiring philosopher tries to save the world from itself. In seventeen genre-bending stories, Nobodies explores the paradoxes of status anxiety, the pitfalls of fame, and the dialectics of identity in the twenty-first century.

Chris Gilmore has published poetry, essays, and reviews in several periodicals and magazines, and one of his screenplays won Third Place in the 2014 Amsterdam Film Festival's Screenwriting Competition, while another was shortlisted as an Official Finalist in the 2014 Beverly Hills Screenwriting Competition. He lives and works in Toronto.

Chris Gilmore's profile page

"Edgy, poignant, funny, Chris Gilmore's Nobodies is a superb break-out volume. An important new talent, Gilmore will become a substantial figure in Canadian literature." - Richard Greene, winner of the Governor General's Award and author of Boxing the Compass

"Smart, sensitive, and deadpan, these stories make us feel both reassured and insecure. Serious while being tongue-in-cheek, perplexed while still authoritative, Gilmore pokes a playful innocent stick at the idea of who gets to tell a story and why. Nobodies is full of real talent: for straight-up realistic storytelling and the more inventive exercises in form." - Michael Winter, author of Into the Blizzard

"Chris Gilmore's portraits of wannabe somebodies finding their way through put-ons, come-ons and trying it on are movingly sensitive and wickedly satirical. The dialogue pops, while the daredevil experiments with narrative form rejuvenate storytelling in an age of texting, sexting, and Tinder. These are stories to put hair on your chest and then joyfully, tenderly rip it off." - Robert McGill, author of Once We Had a Country

"Timely and irreverent, Nobodies takes loving aim at our contemporary approach to sex and relationships, and explores what our changing attitudes to connecting mean for our psychology and our stories. With wit and insight, these formally playful stories skewer our strange modern world." - Grace O'Connell, author of Magnified World

"A truly disturbing, funny, and sharply observed take on loneliness, insecurity, and the search for connection through the omnipresent, semi-permeable barriers of modern hyperconnectedness (and excessive body hair). It will also remind you how many of your favourite writers died of tuberculosis." - Andrew Battershill, author of Pillow