Alberta Readers' Choice Award

Alberta Readers' Choice Award Top 5

"Buying Cigarettes for the Dog"
by Stuart Ross (April 2009)

A man steps out for a pack of smokes and winds up walking around the planet; a woman sun-tanning by a pool finds herself covered in chicken feet; a guerrilla army of cows infiltrates a big city; a man hires a bodyguard to protect him from his poodle. The first book of fiction since 1997 from the consummately underground Stuart Ross blends an unflagging penchant for experiment with the measured skill of a seasoned, highly disciplined craftsman. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog is anything but a collection of linked stories in a homogenous voice: instead, Ross offers us fables, letters, political tracts, gems of minimalist surrealism, and even a post-gothic novella. Throughout, he draws from the same deep, dark sense of humour that has earned him acclaim as Canada's foremost surrealist poet. Ross's strange, strangely compassionate stories engage the emotions as well as the intellect, giving the reader no choice but to participate. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog holds a mirror to the absurdities of 21st-century Earth; here is an absurdism so true that it becomes real.

Reviews
"The only real risk a reader runs with Ross is not being open enough to enjoy the wild ride." -George Murray, The Globe and Mail

"Stuart Ross never ceases to amaze. His writing is an eclectic and Kafka-esque social commentary that includes linguistic play, ironic introspection, surrealist landscapes and vaudevillian slapstick.... Ross presents a riotous convergence of images appropriated from masterpieces of literature, pop culture and his own bizarre imagination. -Fausto Bedoya, Rampike

"[W]hat is perhaps most striking about Ross's work is the originality of its point of view. It is strange, yes. But it is not scattergun weird. It is patterned; it is consistent; it is art." -Michael Bryson, The Danforth Review

"In the court of Canadian poetry and society, Stuart Ross is a sort of Shakespearean fool ...whose clowning around serves a higher artistic and moral purpose." -Zachariah Wells, Arc

About the Author
Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad's office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto's Yonge Street wearing signs like "Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books," selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, Poetry Editor at Mansfield Press, and Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine. He is the author of two collaborative novels, a previous collection of stories, and six full-length poetry books. He has also published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press). Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada. He lives in Southern Ontario.

About Freehand Books
Freehand Books is a publisher of literary fiction, literary non-fiction, and poetry. We look for books that pay an equal-and extraordinary-attention to writing style and to the interests and needs of readers. Great books; great reads.

Editorial decisions are made by an Editorial Advisory Board in conjunction with Freehand editor Robyn Read. The Advisory Board is comprised of Don LePan, JoAnn McCaig, Barbara Scott, Melanie Little and Sarah Ivany.

Our offices are located in the historic Grain Exchange Building in downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Freehand, in operation since June, 2007, is a wholly owned imprint of Broadview Press. For more information about Broadview, please visit www.broadviewpress.com.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

For more information about Freehand Books, visit http://www.freehand-books.com/.