Oct
It’s Spooky Season and we’re featuring readings from some of our authors whose books explore the horrors and vulnerabilities of a life lived. Here, Francine Cunningham reads the short story “Spectre Sex” from her collection God Isn’t Here Today (Invisible Publishing, 2022). This story was inspired by accounts of people having intimate encounters with ghosts. Francine began to mull over the ghosts themselves. What was their say in these encounters? Did they experience consent? What do they get out of the exchange? Listen in!
“God Isn’t Here Today is a collection, I feel, that is whispered in the calligraphy of ghosts. Cunningham continues to both astound and haunt all who discover her. Wow!”—Richard Van Camp, author of The Lesser Blessed
Even as they flirt with the fantastic, the stories in Francine Cunningham’s debut collection, God Isn’t Here Today, unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature—and that redemption can arise where we least expect it.
Francine Cunningham is an award-winning Indigenous writer, artist and educator. God Isn’t Here Today is her debut collection of short fiction. She is a winner of the Indigenous Voices Award in the 2019 Unpublished Prose Category and of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. Francine is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of British Columbia, and currently resides in Alberta.