A bush party leads to self-immolation. A cab ride ends in warfare. A squirrel is eviscerated. A universally impossible dare is accepted and proves not to be fatal. The weird kid triumphs. The stories in H.B. Hogan’s debut collection sizzle like butter on hot cast iron-they’re rich and dark and full of scrappy, sordid and sparkling humanity.
H.B. Hogan lives in Toronto with her boyfriend and her cat. Her fiction has been published in Taddle Creek, This Magazine, and subTerrain . She has a chapbook with Proper Tales Press. Her work has been acknowledged by the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
“What I love most about these stories is the many ways that redemption is made completely absurd, as if to point out how rare and how tenuous moments of self-fulfillment really are. I want to avoid spoilers but I’ll just say that it’s not often that a story makes me gasp in shock and burst out laughing in a single paragraph.”—Claire Farley, editor of Canthius
"The opposite of being comfortable, this is a book that—in the best ways—gets under the skin."—Pickle Me This
"This Keeps Happening is an impressive debut, one that will leave you laughing, cringing, looking off into space uncomfortably, then turning the page once again."—Broken Pencil
"In her darkly entertaining debut collection, H.B. Hogan brings us tales of people who find themselves on the wrong side of the social divide."—Toronto Star
“H. B. Hogan’s stories are dirty, fresh, and brutally funny, lingering on little human details until they’re just uncomfortable enough—then pushing a little farther. Their wickedness will stay with you for days.”—Michelle Winters, author of Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist I Am a Truck