A retired academic is called to a remote university to speak as the replacement for an old friend recently deceased in unusual circumstances. The Stand-In is a transcript of these lectures, revealing a sophisticated tale of art, fame, and adultery that unfolds through rambling anecdotes and flashes of scholarly grandstanding. Fiercely funny and bitterly ironic, The Stand-In has been called the best academic doppelgänger story since Nabokov’s Pale Fire.

Born in Toronto in 1938, David Helwig attended the University of Toronto and the University of Liverpool. His first stories were published in Canadian Forum and The Montrealer while he was still an undergraduate. He then went on to teach at Queen's University. He worked in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players, mostly as a business manager and technician, rubbing elbows with such actors as Gordon Pinsent, Jackie Burroughs and Timothy Findley.

While at Queen's University, Helwig did some informal teaching in Collins Bay Penitentiary and subsequently wrote A Book About Billie with a former inmate.

Helwig has also served as literary manager of CBC Television Drama, working under John Hirsch, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers.

In 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer. He has done a wide range of writing -- fiction, poetry, essays -- authoring more than twenty books. Helwig is also the founder and long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories annual. In 2009 he was named as a member of the Order of Canada.

David Helwig lives in the village of Eldon on Prince Edward Island, where he is the third Poet Laureate. He indulges his passion for vocal music by singing with choirs in Montreal, Kingston, and Charlottetown. He has appeared as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion and Mozart's Requiem.

David Helwig's profile page

PRAISE FOR THE STAND-IN

“David Helwig is one of Canada’s most unsung writers, talent-wise. The Stand-In is not only a witty, eloquent and satirical impromptu, but an artfully regulated romp…a triumph of comic exposition.”—Toronto Star

“The Stand-In is a witty, inventive, sometimes disturbing excursion into the genre of the dramatic monologue, that literary form perfected in poetry by Robert Browning, and here equally successful in prose, in which a single speaker addressing an unseen audience reveals more about himself than he realizes or perhaps intended.” —Prairie Fire

“Helwig superbly explores complex philosophical ideas. His style is engaging and informing, his sense of dialogue extraordinary.”—The Winnipeg Free Press

“A teasingly complex book, The Stand-In combines the intellectual playfulness of a postmodern novel with the high drama of an old-fashioned whodunnit.” —Kim Jernigan, The New Quarterly