We may be lost but we are never alone. That is the message to be found in Brenda Hasiuk’s new collection of short stories, Boy Lost in Wild. Adrift in unfamiliar surroundings, strangers to the strangers around them, the characters in each story feel lost even though they are inextricably tied to one another. A foreign student, mugged on the streets of Winnipeg, befriends his landlord. A young man bursting with rage shares a quiet moment with a sibling. The tears of a child who cannot find his way home are soothed by the voice of an elderly woman.

Through sparkling prose, Hasiuk’s stories ring true, cutting through the alienation of urban life and lighting the threads that bind us to one another.

BRENDA HASIUK has published adult short stories in the Malahat Review, New Quarterly and Prism. She has previously written two YA novels, Where The Rocks Say Your Name (shortlisted for the McNally-Robinson Book of the Year and the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction) and Your Constant Star (praised by Kirkus for its “authentic teen characters, closely observed settings and moving plot”).

Brenda lives in Winnipeg, where she is on the board of Rossbrook House, an inner-city drop-in center for at-risk youth, and heads up Project Reunite, a grassroots group working to support, settle and reunite Syrian refugee families.

Brenda Hasiuk's profile page

Brenda Hasiuk has written a collection of smart, sharply observed stories. Her young characters come from different backgrounds but they’re linked by the fading inner city they all inhabit, and by their efforts to make sense of their world and the choices it offers them. Hasiuk investigates the lives of her characters with sympathy and with an unsentimental optimism.

Esmé Claire Keith, Not Being on a Boat

Hasiuk challenges stereotypes by illuminating her characters' inner lives to reveal their contradictory emotions, contemplations and remembrances, while capturing the connectedness and disparity of Winnipeg's inner city.

HERIZONS

There are facts, there is fiction, and then there is truth. That’s where these stories land—upright and on both feet. These sharply focused stories are confident, engaging, and wise. You won’t want to miss a word.

Lisa Bird-Wilson, Just Pretending