Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair

Mark Paterson is the author of the short story collections A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine, and Other People’s Showers. He was shortlisted for the $15,000 Carter V Cooper Short Fiction Competition (2018), is a past winner of the 3Macs carte blanche Prize (2010) and the Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest (2009). He lives in Lorraine, Quebec.

Montreal Review of Books: “Throughout this collection, the sweet and bitter, the ordinary and odd commingle. Paterson provides us with a lovingly resolute reminder that even in the suburbs, anything – like requited love, courtesy of a gorilla suit – is possible.” (The full review here: mRb)

Previous praise:
“With this book, Paterson secures his place in the ranks of fellow Montrealers Neil Smith and Barry Webster, of Mark Anthony Jarman and the Americans Dennis Johnson and George Saunders: all writers who trade in the zany, the pell-mell, the lunatic and absurd. It’s a kind of comic writing also committed to the travails of victims, of people who suffer misunderstanding and the razor of their own doubts. Mark Paterson is a funny, often empathetic writer.” —The Malahat Review

“Punchy, off-kilter, and highly imaginative.” —Quill & Quire

“Compellingly narrated with a slacker’s eye for the bizarre, the writing seems effortless.” —Globe and Mail