Water Strider speaks of tensions, surfaces and dualities. It is about our jerky imperfect pairings: with our parents, siblings, lovers; with our pasts and our landscapes; with language, memory, and longing; and with our elusive and illusory selves. It explores the fragility of narrative and perception, the dicey boundaries that are part of love and identity, and the thin membrane between anguish and humour.

Karen Hofmann grew up in the Okanagan Valley and taught creative writing at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, for many years. She now divides her time between Vancouver Island and the BC Interior. A first collection of poetry, Water Strider, was published by Frontenac House in 2008 and shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Prize. Her first novel, After Alice, was published by NeWest Press in 2014, and a second novel, What is Going to Happen Next, in 2017. Her short fiction has won the Okanagan Fiction Contest three times, and "The Burgess Shale" was shortlisted at the 2012 CBC Short Fiction Contest. Karen Hofmann is an avid walker, and her writing explores the landscapes, both rural and urban, of British Columbia as well as the personalities and social dynamics of the inhabitants. Her latest novel, A Brief View from the Coastal Suite, was released in spring 2021.

www.karenhofmann.com

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