Drinkin rye and water with Grandma. Guns in False Creek. Frat boy homies from the North Delta ghetto. Samuel L. Jackson. Phantom Lord & Metallica. A kid whos got the hots for his mom…
Hunh?
Thats right. Its all here in this collection of immediate, lean and visceral short fiction from Clint Burnham.

In a style reminiscent of Raymond Carver, the stories contained in Animal depict people on the brink of major life change. They stand at crossroads they are often oblivious to; they suck thick air in rooms filled with palpable tension. Leggat’s characters often seem captured in a cinematic slo-mo, teetering on the edge of something unknown, heroically resisting the ever-present pull of Fate. It matters little whether the characters take action or refuse to act; life acts for them. The reader is left to wonder: When does “meaning” cease to have meaning? Like travelling a mountain highway at night, what’s just around the next bend is never known. The stories in Animal never fail to deliver potent surprises.
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“I’m tempted to say it’s a slim, distilled masterpiece.”
– Michael Bryson, Underground Book Club
“these quickly unfolding stories are elliptically drawn, tense with action and dark humour. Leggat is a shape-shifting writer”
– Ibi Kaslik, The Globe and Mail
“this immensely rewarding collection is worth picking up”
– eye weekly

Finalist, Books in Canada/Amazon.ca First Novel Award
The Beautiful Dead End is a visceral crime thriller that takes the reader on an existential journey to the “other side” and almost back again. In a bizarre, shadowy interzone populated by disturbing characters, our anti-hero confronts the dark secrets of his past, and comes face to face with the consequences of having lived an unexamined life.

Black Rabbit & Other Stories is a debut collection of great intensity and versatility. The stories range from the fantastic to the gritty, from urban dystopias to worlds of dreamlike possibility.
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Winner of the 1995 3-Day Novel-Writing Contest
Body Speaking Words is a novel aboutwhat elsewriting a novel in three days, at the same time offering insights into family, friendship, growing up female, and delighting in strange foods; a poignant, funny and sexy account of one womans attempt to understand what drives us to document the essential stories of our lives.
