Jack Hodgins' acclaimed short story collection now appears in a new edition, along with a new Hodgins story never before published. The collection as a whole immerses us in the lives of characters at once larger than life and intimately familiar. In the title story, a retired Senator fights his way through a major Ottawa snowstorm to keep a family promise. An orthotics sculptor falls in love with the plaster feet of one of his distant patients. On a tour of Mississippi, a Faulkner scholar and her photographer son nudge against touchy issues of race. A ten-year-old farm boy tries to keep a secret about the girl next door. An elderly Vancouver Island couple learns that their distant uncle plans to leave everything to them, in what proves to be a mixed blessing. With settings ranging from Australia, Germany, Ottawa, Mississippi, and the Vancouver Island logging and farming communities that have featured so prominently in his books, Damage Done by the Storm is vintage Jack Hodgins, at his highly crafted best.

Jack Hodgins was raised in Merville, on Vancouver Island, and graduated from the University of British Columbia. Until recently, he taught fiction writing at the University of Victoria. His novels and story collections include: Spit Delaney’s Island, The Invention of the World, Innocent Cities, Broken Ground, Distance, and Damage Done by the Storm. In the spring of 2010, he published his newest novel, The Master of Happy Endings (Thomas Allen). A Passion for Narrative (a guide to writing fiction) is used in classrooms and writing groups across Canada and Australia. Hodgins’ fiction has won the Governor General’s Award, the Canada-Australia Prize, the Commonwealth Prize (Canada and the Caribbean) and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, amongst others. He has given readings, talks, and workshops in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and several European countries, and has taught an annual fiction workshop in Mallorca, Spain. In 2006 he received both the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence in British Columbia. In 2009 the Governor General appointed him a Member of the Order of Canada. He and his wife Dianne have three grown children and three grandchildren. Jack Hodgins’ website is www.jackhodgins.ca

Jack Hodgins' profile page