keirlowther

I may not be religious but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my sacred places. We all do, whether it be in a church, NASCAR on Sundays, the bath, a trail, a leather chair, a room so hot you can stretch your body like it’s young. Sacred places aren’t just a place of comfort, they’re…

If you are a writer who underestimates the value of a great editor, I suggest you read up on Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish. Read the before and afters. See for yourself how Lish (the editor) stripped away the sentimentality of Carver’s prose and helped create a lean profundity and a crisp layering of detail…

As kids, we hid. We got our kicks from hiding under blankets, pillows, coffee tables. Waiting to be found, trembling with excitement. We laughed manically when we were uncovered. I remember how it felt to hide, and and what it took to hide well. I now see it in my kids. It seems our house…

The Atlantic Book Awards are coming to town (Charlottetown) and yours truly (Keir Lowther) will be a part of it, owing to Dirty Bird making the shortlist for the biennial PEI Book Award for Fiction. If you are in Charlottetown, and are looking to be dazzled by my banality or have me write an inappropriate…

Dirty Bird has just received some hometown love by being shortlisted for a PEI Book Award for fiction. The awards are handed out every two years and will be given out as part of the Atlantic Book Awards in May. Since my book is set in PEI, and is about the sort of honest, upstanding…

As a first-time author I thought, idealistically, that when Dirty Bird came out there would be rave reviews in the National Post and the Globe and Mail. Maybe the Toronto Star, The Winnipeg Review, The Coast. Critics praising the book I had spent years delicately (fumblingly is closer to the truth) crafting. Readers responding to…

Dirty Bird has made the Relit Award shortlist for the novel category. The Globe and Mail has called these awards “The country’s pre-eminent prize recognizing independent presses.” The slogan for the awards is “Ideas, Not Money.” I am down with that! To see the rest of the books on the shortlists, click here.

When writers are quiet, either on their websites or social media, it means the writing, or the writing that really matters, is going well. Or at least we think it’s going well, which is just as important. When we are trying to burn through the final pages of a manuscript, or polish those sections that…

As part of the WFNS Literary Awards, I will be in Nova Scotia this weekend reading from my book, Dirty Bird. It was shorlisted for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. On Friday, September 20th, I will be reading in Liverpool at the Lanes Privateer Inn. The event kicks off at 7:00pm and I…

I’m excited to share that Dirty Bird had been shortlisted for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. The $20,000 prize goes to the best work of fiction published by an Atlantic Canadian in the last year. Joining me on the shortlist are CanLit heavyweights Donna Morrissey and Russell Wangersky (who was shortlisted for the…