We all know adults who are stranded in the amber of adolescence. Growing older but not necessarily growing up is the central theme of Middle-Aged Boys & Girls, featuring characters who, to varying degrees, are stuck in adolescent roles of rebel, outcast, enfant terrible and cool kid. All are linked by losses--of looks, of status, of job security, of health, of confidence--which forces them to life's inevitable turning point. Given that we are living in an age where fifty is the new forty, and forty is the new thirty, and twenty is the new god-knows-what, these stories, with their sometimes painful, sometimes funny and always unflinching truths, resonate.

Diane Bracuk is an award-winning Toronto writer whose work has been published in leading literary and mainstream magazines. Her story “Doughnut Eaters” won the 2015 PRISM international creative non-fiction award. Middle-Aged Boys & Girls is her first published collection of short stories.

Diane Bracuk's profile page

• Nominated, Evergreen Award (Nominated)

Lurid and suspenseful in a way you can't quite put your finger on till the end, Middle-Aged Boys & Girls marks a surprising and entertaining debut.

The Globe and Mail

Bracuk is a wonderful writer and her stories take readers on unexpected journeys. They resonate and are affecting. Many of the stories in Middle-Aged Boys & Girls are also award winners!

Packed For Adventure Reviews

The women in Diane Bracuk's probing fiction are crossing what Joseph Conrad called “the shadow line”—the threshold between youth and the middle age—and it is how they extract meaning from the crossing that makes this story collection so intriguing. A worthy read.

Eva Stachniak, author of The Winter Palace and Empress of the Night

Bracuk’s narrative skill and linguistic control make for consistently well-crafted fiction.

Canadian Literature A Quarterly Criticism and Review