• Age: 16
• Grade: 11

Jack Hodgins‘ first book, published originally in 1976, is once again in print — in a new edition. Winner of the Eaton's Book Prize and nominated for the Governor General's Award, Spit Delaney's Island, a collection of short stories, put Vancouver Island on the map as a Canadian literary locale and set Hodgins off on his literary career. Hodgins' prose brings Vancouver Island to life in its touch, its taste and the sound of its dialects — a determinedly real world. At the same time he imbues his people with a sense that there is something more that they cannot see but which they sense and strive towards — a mystery or even magic that they can almost touch but which remains forever elusive. Often compared to Faulkner's fiction of the deep South, Hodgins' stories develop through people who seem to live at the edge of the world, always in danger of falling off that edge. There is Spit himself, the keeper of a steam locomotive that has been exiled to Ottawa for display; there are loggers, country wives, bookstore owners, and people who “live up the mountain” in isolated communes.

Jack Hodgins was raised in Merville, on Vancouver Island, and graduated from the University of British Columbia. Until recently, he taught fiction writing at the University of Victoria. His novels and story collections include: Spit Delaney’s Island, The Invention of the World, Innocent Cities, Broken Ground, Distance, and Damage Done by the Storm. In the spring of 2010, he published his newest novel, The Master of Happy Endings (Thomas Allen). A Passion for Narrative (a guide to writing fiction) is used in classrooms and writing groups across Canada and Australia. Hodgins’ fiction has won the Governor General’s Award, the Canada-Australia Prize, the Commonwealth Prize (Canada and the Caribbean) and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, amongst others. He has given readings, talks, and workshops in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and several European countries, and has taught an annual fiction workshop in Mallorca, Spain. In 2006 he received both the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence in British Columbia. In 2009 the Governor General appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada. He and his wife Dianne have three grown children and three grandchildren. Jack Hodgins’ website is www.jackhodgins.ca

Jack Hodgins' profile page

• Short-listed, Finalist for Governor General's Award

“Jack Hodgin's stories do one of the best things fiction can do — they reveal the extra dimension of the real place, they light up the crazy necessities of real life.” —Alice Munro

Spit Delaney's Island: Selected Stories