Keen, intense, darkly comic, and accident-prone, the short fictions of David Whitton are full of sullen underdogs: his characters clean up real nice, but can’t help but unravel back to their original fallen and fascinating selves. Their mistakes and misdeeds, temptations and transgressions trample through these stories, twisting out intricate surprises at each turn. Whitton navigates contemporary and future, real life and fantasy worlds, continually setting up, if only to send up, modern romantic scenarios. Ultimately, if the boy does get the girl—or vise versa—whether they meet online or on acid, at a wedding or in battle, the object of affection always topples from the pedestal in radical and delightfully refreshing ways.

David Whitton is the author of The Reverse Cowgirl, a story collection. His short fiction has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Darwin's Bastards, Best Canadian Stories, and Journey Prize Stories. He is a graduate of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA program. He lives in Toronto.

David Whitton's profile page

“Whitton writes with words the way a master painter paints – just a few well-placed strokes of his brush and he reveals worlds and characters of vast and mesmerizing complexity. He is marvelous in his ability to show the comic in the tragic, and he constantly forced me to question my own ethics, my own place in the world. A truly gifted writer and a truly kick-ass short story collection.”

Suzette Mayr