"In Japan, a person's blood type is as important as their horoscope. My type, like my grandmother's, is ab. This makes us universal recipients, able to receive blood from anyone, but give only to each other. A person with ab blood has no immunity to other types. No matter what blood they're given, it becomes a part of them, and they never resist."

Universal Recipients is a beautifully constructed series of fictions about the connective tissue between ourselves and the world around us--the at-times debilitating, yet ultimately liberating life-forces that we cannot contain nor deny. Travelling through different worlds and cultures--Newfoundland, Quebec, Vancouver, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore--the characters in Universal Recipients are often haunted by grief, wearing their tragedies like second skins; yet they move on, seeking and finding solace in small, luminous moments of understanding. Teachers and students, parents and children, men and women breaking down the distance between strangers: their stories are inevitable and necessary, like the blood racing through their veins.

Dana Bath's tales, like quiet, meditative gestures, speak to the universal human truths that exist in all of us, confirming her as one of Canada's new literary talents.

Dana Bath is originally from Corner Brook, Newfoundland. She now lives in Montreal, where she teaches English and writes. Bath has been an award winning writer since her early college years. She has won prizes from Grain Magazine’s Short Grain Contest, Anvil Press’s International Three Day Novel Contest, and This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Her book of short stories, What Might Have Been Rain, was published by Conundrum Press in 1998. She has published fiction and non-fiction in Index, Room of One’s Own, Grain, subTerrain, Bitch, Hour Montreal and Matrix.

Dana Bath's profile page

Like those lovely, slow-paced French films where the unfolding human drama is almost claustrophobically intimate, Bath takes you on a carefully crafted trip into the minds of her characters. . . a great read.
-FastForward

Fast Forward Weekly

. . . gentle, stern pieces that expose the stark, enigmatic truths of living.
-The Globe & Mail

Globe & Mail

. . . beautifully constructed series of fictional stories which relate to anyone with connections to other people and other places.
-The Suburban

The Suburban

Universal Recipients is a keen, gimlet-eyed account of the contemporary human condition. The characters are fresh, realistic and remain poised despite their difficult circumstances.
-The Toronto Star

Toronto Star

. . . the stories are honed and polished like fine wood, flecked with grains o the exotic, and the erotic.
-The Telegram

The Telegram

Bath knows how to mix things up effectively. The stories move deftly and confidently from context to context. . .
-Quill & Quire

Quill & Quire

. . .an engaging set of short stories with many instances of insight.
-Montreal Review of Books

Montreal Review