Echolocation

Winner of Best Cover Design at the 2020 Alberta Book Publishing Awards! Third Place in the Prose Category at the 2019 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada! All Lit Up Book Club Selection In this provocative collection of short stories, Karen Hofmann creates characters who struggle to connect or disconnect from entanglements and relationships. With ironic accuracy and sensuous imagery, Hofmann considers a range of human foibles: a newlywed couple who transform into feral beasts during the hardships of a remote research expedition; backbiting faculty members who strip down during a post-conference BBQ; an heretical nun who explores the possibility of a new life by imaginatively excavating the fossils of BC's Burgess Shale; and an ambitious bylaw officer determined to make her mark on the city's streets. In Echolocation, Karen Hofmann has found new ways to sound the depths of the human heart.

About the Author :
Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley and taught creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, for many years. She now divides her time between Vancouver Island and the BC Interior. A first collection of poetry, Water Strider, was published by Frontenac House in 2008 and shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. Her first novel, After Alice, was published by NeWest Press in 2014, and a second novel, What is Going to Happen Next, in 2017. Her short fiction has won the Okanagan Fiction Contest three times, and "The Burgess Shale" was shortlisted at the 2012 CBC Short Fiction Contest. Karen Hofmann is an avid walker, and her writing explores the landscapes, both rural and urban, of British Columbia as well as the personalities and social dynamics of the inhabitants. Her latest novel, A Brief View from the Coastal Suite, was released in spring 2021. www.karenhofmann.com

Review :
Praise for Echolocation: "Echolocation is a magical and surreal examination of humanity at the edges of experience." ~ Kristian Wilson, Bustle "...lived up to our high expectations." ~ Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf "Dark stories weave together beauty and cruelty." ~ Rory Runnells, Winnipeg Free Press "[In 'Virtue Prudence Courage,'] Hofmann's adjustment of narrative perspective is so masterfully subtle that I had to go back to see when and how exactly this ordinary love story became a weird horror story." ~ Stephanie L. Lu, Canadian Literature "...lived up to our high expectations." ~ Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf "Part Darwinian, part Ovidian, these are waltzing and desirous tales of transformation, thrumming with verdant light reaching through forest canopies. Hofmann's characters are strange creatures bumping against one another in the shadows, with cracking voices seeking to connect. And then, when you least expect it, mad leaps from the dark into the light." ~ R.W. Gray, author of Entropic and Crisp