A Library Journal Key Indie Fiction Title, Fall 2014

Meet Xavier Boland, the untouchable cross-dresser, who walks loose and carefree as an old Broadway tune. Meet Miss Penrice, a lost old woman forced by wartime to parent a child for the first time. Meet a Zamboni mechanic turned funeral porteur, Madame Poirer's lapdog (and its chastity belt), a congregation of hard-singing, sex-obsessed Pentecostals, and more. With The Freedom in American Songs, Kathleen Winter brings her unusual sensuality, lyrically rendered settings, and subversive humour to bear on a new story collection about modern loneliness, small-town gay teens, catastrophic love, and the holiness of ordinary life.

Praise for Kathleen Winter

"Utterly original."-O, The Oprah Magazine

"Absorbing, earnest. . . . Beautifully written."-The New York Times Book Review

"Her lyrical voice and her crystalline landscape are enchanting."-The New Yorker

"Read it because it's a story told with sensitivity to language that compels to the last page, and read it because it asks the most existential of questions. Stripped of the trappings of gender, Winter asks, what are we?" - The Globe and Mail

"She captures the way the truth both imprisons us and sets us free. . . . Simple, touching, real, absolutely convincing and sympathetic."-The Rumpus

"A major writer."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Kathleen Winter is the author of the international bestseller, Annabel, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and CBC’s Canada Reads. Her first collection of stories, boYs, won both the Winterset Award and the Metcalf–Rooke Award. A long-time resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, she now lives in Montreal.

Kathleen Winter's profile page

"There are characters, and then there are characters. Just look at the parade of people you'll find in this collection of short stories by Kathleen Winter (author of the prize-winning novel Annabel )" - The Quivering Pen

"As in her often-brilliant novel Annabel, Winter's new collection offers empathetic examinations of people who don't quite fit within the narrow confines of society ... Besides her depth of sympathy, Winter breathes remarkable life into her settings ... [she] knows how to love a place, and it shows." - Publishers Weekly

"Quirky, often humorous stories threaded with emotional depth and complexity ... Winter holds the narratives fast, teetering on the edge of understanding, leaving both her characters and reader in a state of suspended uncertainty ... sentences linger and bloom in the reader's mind ... wonderful indeed." - Quill & Quire

"Winter shows that even the briefest of interactions between people can have profound effects that last a lifetime ... These short stories reach right into the heart of such moments of human connection, richly portraying the significance of both intimate and casual encounters. The Freedom in American Songs illuminates the interior landscape of its characters, examining the fragility of our relationships and the indelible traces they leave on us." - CultMTL

"Winter's quirky second collection offers 14 stories filled with extraordinary individuals living within artfully rendered landscapes. The three “Marianne stories', set in a village on the east coast of Canada, are filled with wonders and discoveries, from the beauty of splits of wood in winter to raspberries out of season. Marianne's visit to a Pentecostal service is a comic delight. The second section ranges from the cross-dressing Xavier of the title story to Claire, who is visiting Florida's Sanibel Island as a respite from the Montréal winter, to a homeless flamenco dancer, all rendered in vivid, empathetic language." - Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com

"Her work gets under your skin and sticks with you ... it's that rush, that probing of the unconscious, that gives these stories their raw power ... when I got to the last page of The Freedom in American Songs, I wished I could keep reading." - Rover