HURON COUNTY AUTHORS
Homegrown Stories from Huron County (Ontario) Authors
Homegrown Stories from Huron County (Ontario) Authors
Andrew Kaufman was born in the town of Wingham, Ontario. This is the same town that Alice Munro was born in, making him the second best writer from a town of 3000. Descending from a long line of librarians and accountants, his first published work was All My Friends Are Superheroes, a story following the adventures of a man turned invisible only to his wife. This novella, first published by Coach House Books in Canada, has also been published in the UK and translated into Italian, French, Norwegian, German, Korean, Spanish and Turkish. He has since published The Waterproof Bible, The Tiny Wife, Selected Business Correspondence, Born Weird, . He is also an accomplished screenwriter for film and television, and has completed a Directors’ Residence at the Canadian Film Centre. He lives in East Oz district of downtown Toronto with has wife, the film editor Marlo Miazga and their two children, Phoenix and Frida.
-Contacting the author directly
“This book is like a kiss in the afternoon sun." – Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?
A tenth anniversary edition of the worldwide cult favorite, now with new material and illustrations.
All Tom's friends really are superheroes. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding she was hypnotized to believe Tom is invisible. Six months later, she's sure Tom has abandoned her. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards an airplane, determined to leave the heartbreak behind. He has till they land to make her see him.
This tenth anniversary edition adds short stories, illustrations, and a foreword to the cult classic that has been a bestseller in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden.
A magical story of love and the isolation that defines the modern condition - Andrew Kaufman pulls off the near impossible and creates a wholly original allegorical tale that is both emotionally resonant and outlandishly fun.
Rebecca Reynolds is a young woman with a most unusual and inconvenient problem: no matter how hard she tries, she can't stop her emotions from escaping her body and entering the world around her. Luckily she's developed a nifty way to trap and store her powerful emotions in personal objects - but how many shoeboxes can a girl fill before she feels crushed by her past?
Three events force Rebecca to change her ways: the unannounced departure of her husband, Stewart; the sudden death
of Lisa, her musician sister; and, while on her way to Lisa's funeral, a near-crash with what appears to be a giant frogwoman recklessly speeding in a Honda Civic.
Meanwhile, Lisa's inconsolable husband skips the funeral and flies to Winnipeg where he begins a bizarre journey that strips him of everything before he can begin to see a way through his grief… all with the help of a woman who calls herself God.
For years, writer Andrew Kaufman has been buying vintage business letters from antique fairs and liquidation auctions. Selected Business Correspondence collects the best and most bizarre of these letters. Kaufman swears that they are authentic, and that he has not simply typewritten short, smart stories onto blank business letterhead. He swears.
The Weirds have always been a little off, but not one of them ever suspected that they'd been cursed by their grandmother.
At the moment of the births of her five grandchildren Annie Weird gave each one a special power. Richard, the oldest, always keeps safe; Abba always has hope; Lucy is never lost and Kent can beat anyone in a fight. As for Angie, she always forgives, instantly. But over the years these so-called blessings ended up ruining their lives.
Now Annie is dying and she has one last task for Angie: gather her far-flung brothers and sisters and assemble them in her grandmother's hospital room so that at the moment of her death, she can lift these blessings-turned-curses. And Angie
has just two weeks to do it.
What follows is a quest like no other, tearing up highways and racing through airports, from a sketchy Winnipeg nursing home to the small island kingdom of Upliffta, from the family's crumbling ancestral Toronto mansion to a motel called Love. And there is also the search for the answer to the greatest family mystery of all: what really happened to their father, whose maroon Maserati was fished out of a lake so many years ago?
A robber charges into a bank with a loaded gun, but instead of taking any money he steals an item of sentimental value from each person. Strange things start to happen to the victims after he escapes: A tattoo comes to life; a husband turns into a snowman; a baby starts to defecate money. And Stacey Hinterland discovers she's shrinking a little every day. Nothing she or her husband can do will reverse the process. Can Stacey and the other victims find a solution before it is too late?
"[Kaufman's] prose is so refreshingly heartfelt and natural that he makes it easy to believe.”—The Coast
In this new novel by ReLit award–winning, Leacock-nominated writer Andrew Kaufman, the narrator eschews the usual avenues of mid-life crisis-sportscars, mistresses-and instead seeks meaning in the least likely of places: small claims court. There, he struggles to understand what’s gone wrong in his marriage, his career as a writer, and his relationship with his two young children.
With small observations, subtle investigations, and the pursuit of small-scale justice, he attempts to rebuild his faith in humanity through the framework of a court system that won’t let you sue for damages above twenty thousand dollars. Small Claims is a big dose of tenderness for the frailties of the heart.
Shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award
Part modern fable, part detective novel, a journey through grief in the imaginary world of Metaphoria.
One cold winter night, Charlie shares a cab with a stranger in a purple hat. As they talk, a cloud of purple smoke overwhelms him and he wakes up to find himself behind the only desk in the Epiphany Detective Agency. Charlie, as it turns out, is trapped in Metaphoria, an otherworldly place that reality has forgotten, a place where everything means something else. His first client is Shirley Miller, who insists on hiring Charlie to find her husband's missing heart. In fact, she's so insistent that she replaces Charlie's heart with a bomb. He has twenty-four hours to find Twiggy Miller's heart - and its meaning - or his own will explode.
Tender and brutal, optimistic and despairing, this modern fable by the author of the cult hit All My Friends Are Superheroes takes a fresh look at what it means to fall into, and out of, love.
Aesop meets Anaïs Nin in these absurdist stories of very unexpected redemption
Getting to the Shamrock Motel isn’t easy. It’s just off Concession #18, but you can’t get there through a sequence of lefts and rights. To find the Shamrock you have to be lost – not just on the map, but in your heart and soul.
The Shamrock Motel does not accept reservations. The only way to get a room is by walking into the office and asking Rosemary, the owner/operator for one. Try not to stare at her hair.
Fair warning: no one spends the night, or even an hour at the Shamrock without experiencing some form of transformation. Whether it’s accidentally sleeping with a bear, turning yourself into a river, or getting entirely too intimate with the sun, time spent at the Shamrock will make you wiser, stronger, sexier, and more yourself. Even if that’s the last thing you want.
These linked stories explore the intersection of personality and desire, love and lust, the joy and sadness of being alive and in love. Heated pool, cable TV, and a shot at redemption: the Shamrock Motel offers it all. Credit cards are accepted, but cash is preferred.