Winner, Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction
Long-Shortlisted, ReLit Award (Short Fiction)

"You go through life convinced you’re going to get diabetes like your old man and one day you choke to death on chicken gristle, and the autopsy shows your blood sugars were perfect."

The seventeen stories in Elaine McCluskey’s latest collection, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes, follow characters who have reached a four-way stop in life; some are deciding whether to follow the signs or defy them; others find a sinkhole forming beneath their feet.

A former fast-talking, big-bucks radio host now lives as a divorced payday loaner working in a strip mall; a football wide receiver at a small Canadian university works the night shift as a bouncer while recovering from his third concussion; a well-liked city councilor is arrested on a packed bus. As one character puts it, "life is just one extended series of anecdotes strung together until they kill you."

Set in the Maritimes but transcending regional boundaries, McCluskey’s stories are experimental, sometimes provocative, and often about those living on the margins. Smart, compassionate and unsparing, Rafael Has Pretty Eyes explores the absurdity and interconnectedness of a life adrift.

Elaine McCluskey grew up in a boxing household. She is a former news editor and bureau chief of the Canadian Press in Halifax and has also worked as a reporter at CBC-TV and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. Her debut short story collection, The Watermelon Social, was shortlisted for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and published in the Fiddlehead, the Antigonish Review, the Dalhousie Review, the Gaspereau Review and Room of One's Own.

Elaine McCluskey's profile page

• Short-listed, ReLit Award (Short Fiction)
• Winner, Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction