Theories of Everything
by Dwayne Brenna
Award-winning author Dwayne Brenna’s new collection of short fiction features unforgettable characters struggling with the challenges of being human
Shadowpaw Press in Regina, Saskatchewan, is happy to announce the release on March 11 of Theories of Everything, a new collection of short stories by award-winning Saskatoon author Dwayne Brenna.
Theories of Everything will be launched in Saskatoon at McNally Robinson Booksellers on March 20, along with Hello, the new short fiction collection by Brenna’s fellow Saskatoon author David Carpenter. A second launch for both books will follow in the Arizona Room at Bushwakker Brewpub in Regina on March 24. Both launches are at 7 p.m.
“The publication of Theories of Everything marks a happy end to a labyrinthine journey for these short stories,” says Brenna. “One of the stories, ‘Blood Red Polish,’ first saw the light of day in Guy Vanderhaeghe’s creative writing class at the University of Saskatchewan. I began working on a book-length manuscript at the Hambidge Artist’s Colony in Rabun Gap, Georgia, in 2016. ‘Los Diablitos’ found a home in The Cold Mountain Review a year later. The American journal Intima published ‘Respite’ two years after that. The entire manuscript was sold to Coteau Books in 2019 but did not make it to press before that publishing house folded. Thankfully, Shadowpaw Press rode to the rescue and made the book, at long last, a reality.”
“I’m thrilled to be able to publish this collection of terrific short stories by Dwayne Brenna,” says Edward Willett, publisher of Shadowpaw Press. “They’re a delight to read, and I’m certain readers will be as enthralled by them as I was.”
“I love reading short stories, and I love writing them,” Brenna adds. “I love their economy, their quick set-up and their need for spareness. I love how they crave a strong voice and dialogue that is full of character. I love their need for muscular verbs and well-crafted sentences. My hope is that readers will enjoy these stories and see in them the attention to detail that made them so much fun to write.”
More about Theories of Everything
“I remember thinking to myself, as I said goodbye to my friends and walked home through the dimly lit backstreets, that the past comes back to haunt everybody sooner or later.”
In this finely honed collection of short fiction, Dwayne Brenna creates a series of unforgettable characters, from academics and street people to musicians, movie stars, videogame players and their mothers, cooks, actors, boxers, and even a parrot, and, with compassion and affection (and sometimes laugh-out-loud humour) tests their mettle in a variety of fascinating locations, from Saskatoon to Victoria to Libya to Los Angeles to London to Hawaii and beyond, with familiar and homey details and fidelity to mood and atmosphere.
Along the way, Brenna tackles a wide selection of conflicts and social ills―good versus evil, scruples and the lack of them, doing or not doing the “right thing,” yielding or not yielding to temptations, and the many other struggles of the human heart―all without being didactic or preachy, but simply by addressing the very human circumstances his characters find themselves in, and how they manage to escape, or not escape, the predicaments arising because of who they are, who they’ve been, and who they could be.
Praise for Theories of Everything
“These fifteen stories vary widely in terms of subject matter, theme, setting, and characters, yet they are unified by the strength of the writing and the narrative voice . . . there is an energy in all of these stories that propels and seduces the reader and piques her interest. And what a variety of characters! Academics, street people, ageing hippies, farmers, music producers, videogame players and their mothers, movie stars, boxers, actors, cooks, and even a parrot. The writer clearly has compassion and affection for the characters he’s created and put through their paces, sometimes with laugh-out-loud humour.” – J. Jill Robinson, author of The Land of Not Knowing
More about the author
Dwayne Brenna is the award-winning author of several books of humour, poetry, and fiction. Coteau Books published his popular series of humorous vignettes entitled Eddie Gustafson’s Guide to Christmas in 2000. His two books of poetry, Stealing Home and Give My Love to Rose, were published by Hagios Press in 2012 and 2015 respectively. Stealing Home, a poetic celebration of the game of baseball, was subsequently shortlisted for several Saskatchewan Book Awards, including the University of Regina Book of the Year Award. His first novel, New Albion, about a laudanum-addicted playwright struggling to survive in London’s East End during the winter of 1850-51, was published by Coteau Books in autumn 2016. New Albion won the 2017 Muslims for Peace and Justice Fiction Award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. It was also one of three English-language novels shortlisted for the prestigious MM Bennetts Award for historical fiction. His baseball novel Long Way Home was published by Pocol Press in 2022, and his theatre history text Nights That Shook the Stage (McFarland Books) came out in the spring of 2023. His short stories and poems have been published in an array of journals, including Grain, Nine, Spitball, The Antigonish Review, Intima, and The Cold Mountain Review.
About Shadowpaw Press
Shadowpaw Press, located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, was founded in 2018 by award-winning author Edward Willett. Shadowpaw Press is a member of Literary Press Group (Canada) and the Association of Canadian Publishers and publishes an eclectic selection of books by both new and established authors, including adult fiction, young adult fiction, children’s books, nonfiction, and anthologies.
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