• Age: 16 to 18
• Grade: 11 to 12

Hello, Sweetheart is darkly humorous, gritty, and touching. McCluskey's unassuming Canadian towns are populated by dreamers and disappointment, killers and collaborators, VLT junkies, sinister drug-testers, and a dangerous stay-at-home dad named Mugsy. It exposes the frailties of people—marginalized people, forgotten people, and grieving people—but never loses sight of their humanity. Edgy and at times disturbing, this collection of short stories will take you places you don't expect to go.

Elaine McCluskey grew up in a boxing household. She is a former news editor and bureau chief of the Canadian Press in Halifax and has also worked as a reporter at CBC-TV and the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. Her debut short story collection, The Watermelon Social, was shortlisted for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and published in the Fiddlehead, the Antigonish Review, the Dalhousie Review, the Gaspereau Review and Room of One's Own.

Elaine McCluskey's profile page