In the tradition of short story writers Alice Munro and Carol Shields, Binnie Brennan examines the minutiae of ordinary life. During a tipsy night out escaping the frustrations of daily routines, two middle-aged school teachers try their luck at scoring a joint. A long-haul trucker drives an injured butterfly to its breeding ground in Florida, giving them both a much-needed migration. And while struggling with the death of her ex-husband, a single mother questions her place in her family’s lives. A Certain Grace is richly told in spare prose and woven with vignettes of a much-loved grandfather’s life. 

Binnie Brennan’s short stories have appeared in a number of Canadian and American literary journals, such asExistere, The Adirondack Review, Glossolalia, and All Rights Reserved, and in 2007 her children’s story “A Spider’s Tale” was adapted for the stage featuring Symphony Nova Scotia. Her best-selling novella, Harbour View, was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, longlisted for the ReLit Award, and was co-winner of the 2009 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. Binnie is a graduate of Queen’s University and the Humber School for Writers, where she was mentored by M.G. Vassanji and Alistair MacLeod. Born in Toronto, Binnie lives in Halifax, where she is a violist with Symphony Nova Scotia.

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Binnie Brennan’s pitch-perfect stories chart with a musician’s precision the beats between tenderness and cruelty, between innocence and understanding, in the gulf between what we long for and what is. Centred on the rifts between partner and partner, parents and children, acquaintances and strangers, they hover on the cusp of loss and the quiet deliverance of words themselves, to pinpoint the moment, brimming with possibility, when everything changes.