Betsy Trumpener’s raw fiction hits quickly, cuts deeply and lingers on in the imagination. Her urgent, unique voice pushes fiction north of what’s real. The Butcher of Penetang carves up rare slices of savory stories that are both tough and delicious. A child missing in a dangerous part of town; a draft dodger with bloody hands; a robber armed with a hairbrush; a refugee who rescues poetry from his prison cell; moose hunters chasing snow flakes. The people in these edgy stories cut cocaine into comfort food, push sex into the snow, and chase speeding ambulances in the dead of winter. Trumpener’s debut collection is aching, funny, powerful and sharp.

Betsy Trumpener is an award-winning CBC News reporter, writer and radio documentary producer. She has lived in Iowa, Israel, Alberta, Ontario, Bavaria and the Black Forest. She now lives with her family between a wild swamp and a pipeline in northern British Columbia, where she covers the daily drama of British Columbia's interior.

Trumpener's non-fiction and fiction writing have been published in the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, This Magazine, NOW Magazine, Monday Magazine, the Malahat Review, Event, the Queen Street Quarterly, Northword and filling Station. She was the first annual writer in residence for the CBC weekend arts show, North By Northwest, and she has been awarded a Western Magazine Award for her column, "North of Unreal," a Jack Webster Award for Best Radio Feature, and a Jack Webster Africa Journalism Fellowship.

The Butcher of Penetang is her first book. She lives in Prince George, British Columbia.

Betsy Trumpener's profile page

• Short-listed, Danuta Gleed Award
• Short-listed, ReLit Award