Fiction Short Stories (single Author)
Entropic
- Publisher
- NeWest Press
- Initial publish date
- May 2015
- Category
- Short Stories (single author), Literary, Gay
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781927063873
- Publish Date
- May 2015
- List Price
- $11.99
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Winner of the 2016 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award at the East Coast Literary Awards!
Shortlisted for the Book Design Award at the 2016 Alberta Book Publishing Awards!
Shortlisted for the 2015 New Brunswick Book Awards!
In this collection of stories, author and filmmaker R. W. Gray (Crisp) finds the place where the beautiful, the strange, and the surreal all meet—sometimes meshing harmoniously, sometimes colliding with terrible violence, launching his characters into a redefined reality.
A lovestruck man discovers the secret editing room where his girlfriend erases all her flaws; a massage artist finds that she has a gift, but is uncertain of the price; a beautiful man sets out to be done with beauty; and a gay couple meets what appear to be younger versions of themselves, learning that history can indeed repeat itself.
About the author
R.W. Gray is a writer and filmmaker. He is the winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Canadian Fiction Award for his second short story collection Entropic (2015) which was also shortlisted for the NB Book Awards. His first short story collection, Crisp (2010) was shortlisted for the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Danuta Gleed Award.
He has directed six short films including the award winning films "Choke Hold" (2015) and "zack & luc" (2013), and his films have been featured in festivals around the world. Along with filmmakers Jon Dewar and Matt Rogers he runs Frictive Pictures Inc. He has had over ten short scripts produced including the award-winning shorts “alice & huck” executive produced and starring actress Allison Mack (Smallville) and “Blink” starring actor Mark Hildreth (V, Ressurection). He was one of the creators of the Screenwriting program at Vancouver Film School where he was head of that program for five years.
He is the co-producer/organizer with the NB Film Co-op of the popular 48 Hour Filmmaking Competition. He is a senior editor of numerocinqmagazine.com, and is chiefly responsible for “Numero Cinq at the Movies,” the weekly film column.
He is professor of film and screenwriting in the Department of English at the University of New Brunswick.
Awards
- Winner, Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award at the East Coast Literary Awards
- Short-listed, Best Book Design Award at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards
- Short-listed, New Brunswick Book Award
Excerpt: Entropic (by (author) R.W. Gray)
Excerpt from “Blink”
You’d understand if you could see her. Here, in the Saturday morning street market, a black coffee in one hand, the other gently running over the spines of tattered books on a book table. Everything about her conspires toward composure. Each strand of hair flowing with the others, the perfectly cut line where her hairline parts. She’s not a woman who fidgets. She has the composure of the stone women who hold up temple roofs.
Do the melancholy candle vendor, the grim Belgian chocolatier, the slow grazing market goers feel this way around her? Redundant. Untethered, wanting to hold her hand so as to not float away.
Lost. I’ve lost sight of her.
The market air shudders. Oceans lie down on me. A flock of wingless, cawless birds fling themselves over the buildings, the Saturday shoppers motionless, paper thin and oblivious. Lost.
She turns then and I see her in profile, eating caramelized ginger delicately from a paper bag like it’s a secret between her and the ginger. Not lost.
Silly. I think, silly. Like a child. My mother must have used this word once. Many times. Don’t be silly.
I mention this to my therapist, how I lose her. It’s not the first time. He, predictably, asks how it makes me feel. Silly, I say. He, predictably, looks concerned.
I don’t tell him how I am braced for this pain now, braced waiting for the next sinkhole, for the sound to suck out of the room, and the deep, sea-floor silence to press in.
She’ll turn then, colour gushing back in, and see my furrowed forehead, throw me a subtle lift of her eyebrows to ask what’s up, as if nothing. Silly.
Editorial Reviews
"[R.W. Gray] treads a fascinating line between realities … a tender, globetrotting, strongly visual collection."
~ Publishers Weekly
"[w]hen Gray is good he's very good, his modern parables peeling off layers of convention to get at subconscious truths, submerged archetypes, and emotions."
~ Alex Good, Quill & Quire
"R.W. Gray’s second book of short stories, Entropic, is the work of a writer exploring his gifts."
~ Jules Bentley, Plenitude Magazine
"Entropic is executed with Cronenbergian deviance, raising tingly questions about the ways lack and absence manifest."
~ Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Canadian Literature
