Dead Writers

In this collaborative fiction project, four writers navigate the protean concept of the “bargain” in novella-length stories. A biographer surveying the career of a “haunted” literary figure, a lovelorn journalist entering into a diabolic covenant, a tourist attempting to stay sober through her holiday travels, and a doctor’s complicity in a colonial scandal: These horror-inflected offerings of existential dread, tainted pasts, and uncertain futures serve as an unbalancing reminder that there is always a high price to pay for the corruption of the soul.

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Hazlitt, Maclean’s, and elsewhere. The National Post has hailed his writing as “an inventive escape from the conventional.”

Michael LaPointe is the author of The Creep (Random House Canada, 2021). He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and he was a columnist for The Paris Review.

Cassidy McFadzean is the author of three books of poetry: Crying Dress (House of Anansi, 2024), Drolleries (McClelland & Stewart, 2019), shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, and Hacker Packer (M&S, 2015), winner of two Saskatchewan Book Awards and finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her fiction has appeared in carte blanche, Joyland, Maisonneuve, The Malahat Review, and Prism International.

Naben Ruthnum is a Toronto-based author of fiction and criticism. He is the author of Helpmeet, The Grimmer, and A Hero of Our Time.

“Four Canadian writers come together for a volume of novellas based on one prompt: ‘a bargain.’ The novellas are very different in plot and narrative style but are united by an underlying sense of dread. There’s the haunting tale of a woman hired to write the biography of a complicated author after he dies by suicide, a found historical document about the atrocities carried out against First Nations students at a residential school, the story of a vacation that provides anything but the peace and tranquility its title promises, and a jarringly direct examination of the deal-with-the-devil trope. These novellas contain no jump scares; instead, their horror stems from the sense that something unavoidably uneasy weighs on the bargains the characters are offered. Then consider the anthology’s title alongside the fact that each of the novella’s narrators is a writer themselves, which ratchets the fear up to another level. This deeply unsettling and insidious psychological horror collection evokes feelings that will linger with readers, similar to Ananda Lima’s Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil or the work of Samanta Schweblin.”—Becky Spratford, Library Journal

“Creativity, genius, a romantic spirit, a poetic sensibility—none of these things are free. At least that is what Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, and Naben Ruthnum communicate in their stories for the collection Dead Writers. Each writer’s skills come through clearly in this set of novellas united by the theme of bargaining. In Ruthnum’s story, a woman who works in the publishing industry is tasked with writing the biography of a dead writer whom she hardly knew while he was alive. The narrative provides a fresh angle on the trope of the writer’s bargain—in which literary skills come with a tortured-genius complex—by showing the consequences from an outsider’s perspective. McFadzean’s story follows a recovering alcoholic on vacation in Sicily, struggling to stay sober as she negotiates the terms of her relationship and her new life. McFadzean infuses the story with the tonal malaise that only a poet can create. For a collection of four stories that explore the same theme, Dead Writers is a diverse work; one that compels readers to assess the sacrifices made and stakes involved in their own bargains.”—Adam Inniss, Maisonneuve

“A collection of intimately told stories in which characters wrestle with seemingly innocent deals and the ethical and emotional fallouts that follow… Following three perceptive and provocative entries, Ah‑Sen’s monologue is a confounding, demanding, yet undeniably singular finish. The omnibus format, by its very nature, can be a roll of the dice for the reader. But Dead Writers offers its pleasures and challenges as a collection in which enjoyment lies in the unexpected.”—Kevin Jagernauth, Literary Review of Canada

“Though the four novellas comprising Dead Writers vary tremendously in style and subject matter, they all evoke a delicious, spine-tingling sense of dread. These tales take readers on a head spinning journey through the inner workings of a cruel colonial school, all the way to a creepy contemporary vacation rental, never losing sight of the selfish, unscrupulous, and inescapable aspects of human behaviour. This is a collection that will keep you turning pages, but that will also make you wonder: Are the pages turning you?”—Allegra Hyde, author of The Last Catastrophe

“A life can be said to be structured according to the compiled trade-offs one makes—some subtle and unconscious, others person-defining, life-altering. The heart of each propulsive and mystique-drenched novella in Dead Writers is a study of one such bargain, and its rippling consequences. These explorations puzzle together a collection at once disparate and in conversation, much like how the fabric that constitutes a person is puzzled together by the delicately threaded bargains one makes in one’s own life.”—Nour Abi-Nakhoul, author of Supplication