Eating Fire follows in the steps of Riordon’s popular 1996 book Out our way, on gay and lesbian life in the country (BTL, 1996). This new set of tales examines the range in living patterns and relationships among queer families across Canada.

Eating Fire illuminates the rich diversity in which people negotiate their personal and public identities. As in all his writing and radio work, Riordon brings to this book a subtle, direct, and vivid style. For Eating Fire he travelled widely, engaging in significant new research and speaking with hundreds of fascinating people. The resulting book is wanted and needed in classrooms, within queer communities, and among everyone hungry for knowledge about the wide range of Canadian families.

A Canadian writer and documentary-maker for almost four decades, Michael Riordon generates books and articles, audio, video and film documentaries, and plays for radio and stage. A primary goal of his work is to recover voices of people who have been silenced in the mainstream, written out of the official version.

Michael Riordon teaches writing, and has written four books of oral history: Our Way to Fight: Peace-Work Under Siege in Israel-Palestine, Eating Fire: Family Life on the Queer Side, An Unauthorized Biography of the World, and Out Our Way: Gay and Lesbian Life in Rural Canada. He lives near Picton, Ontario.

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