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This tenth-anniversary edition of Kate Cayley's award-winning collection includes three new stories.A young mother intrudes into the life of an older woman, thinking she knows what's best. An academic becomes convinced that he is haunted by his double. Two children spy on their supposedly criminal neighbours. A man enables his cousin's predatory impulses out of loyalty, and a circus performer dreams of a perfect wedding. These characters fail despite their best intentions and continue on despite their failures.
The stories in
How You Were Born, each more incisive and devastating than the last, examine the difficult business of love, loyalty, and memory. Sharing the bizarre and tragi-comic of life--whether in present-day Toronto or in small towns of the early 20th century--Cayley champions the importance of connections, even when missed or mislaid, and the possibility of redemption.
About the author
Kate Cayley is the author of three poetry collections, including Lent, a young adult novel, and two short story collections. How You Were Born won the Trillium Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Cayley has won the O. Henry Short Story Prize, the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry, and the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction. Her plays have been produced in Canada, the US and the UK. Cayley lives in Toronto with her wife and their three children. Alayna Munce is a writer, editor, and publisher. In 2019, Alayna was named publisher of Brick Books, Canada's poetry-only press. Though her first love is poetry, she also writes and edits fiction. Her first novel, When I Was Young and In My Prime (Nightwood Editions, 2005) was nominated for the Trillium Book Award and appeared on the national bestseller list. She is slowly working on a second novel and lives in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto in a bustling blended family of six.
