An agent provocateur possessed of almost monstrous talent, Sherwin Tjia has been navigating the edges of Canadian poetry for some time, enthralling and agitating readers with his bizarre and beautiful chapbooks and concept-driven poetry.Gentle Fictions represents Tjia's exploration of both the essence and limits of poetry. Here, the traditional and innovative meet to form a riptide. These poems utilize a variety of forms and conceits toward expressing a world view that is tender and turbulent.Tjia's voice is intense, assured, preternaturally sophisticated. The poems, which charge through such structures as lists, found-text assemblies, lyrical verses and near-epics, are as ingenious as they are sterling instances of pure poetry.The arrival of Gentle Fictions marks an explosive entry into the CanLit atmosphere -- these poems are locked and loaded, certain to make a scorching, indelible mark.

Sherwin Tjia is a Montreal-based poet, painter and illustrator. He is the author of Gentle Fictions, Pedigree Girls, and The World Is a Heartbreaker (a finalist for the A.M. Klein Poetry Award). The Hipless Boy, a collection of short, interconnected stories told in graphic novel form was a finalist for the Doug Wright Award and for four Ignatz Awards. His most recent offering is an interactive adventure style book told from the point of view of a housecat entitled, You are a Cat! In his spare time, he organizes Slowdance Nights, Love Letter Reading Open Mics, Crowd Karaoke singalongs, and Strip Spelling Bees as Chat Perdu Productions. His invention, The E-Z-Purr, a CD with over an hour of cats purring, is available for download from CD Baby.

Sherwin Tjia's profile page