What Readers are saying
"Oh dear, you're pretty sad."
—My mom
—My mom
2024 VMI Besty Warland Between Genres Award Judge's Note, Stephen Collis:
"More than mere Anecdotes, Kathryn Mockler delivers a kaleidoscope of compressed, heartbreaking, and hilariously vivid scenes from our age of anxiety. Visions and traumas, both personal and political, unfold as fabulations, autofictions, found texts and allegory (wherein “the past” laughs themselves silly at “the future’s” efforts to build their “dream home”). The end of the world is our daily companion—seen on a highway outside Las Vegas, or casually announced in a public library—but Mockler never lets us forget the very ordinary ways we experience endings: of friendships, love, self-confidence, or childhood illusions. How does one not despair? Mockler reminds us, in seemingly endless permutations of prose genre, form, and method, that “everything becomes beautiful when you realize nothing is going to last.”
2024 Victoria Butler Book Prize, Jury Notes:
"Anecdotes, by Kathryn Mockler, is a darkly humorous, playful, and inventive book that—through short fiction, one-act screenplays, prose poetry, and found poems—reveals humanity at its most deplorable with a straightforward nonchalance that makes its words resonate all the more deeply. Through her vulnerable, honest, and unsentimental characters, Mockler holds a mirror to a world damaged by misogyny and capitalist apathy, while still maintaining hope and compassion for humans and the planet we live on."
2024 Fred Kerner Book Award, Comments from the Judges:
“Kathryn Mockler challenges our preconceptions about what a short-story is and can be with this collection. Like Lydia Davis before her, she pushes the envelope on this form, opening new vistas for writers who are bound to follow her lead. Particularly engaging are the stories that play with form to bring us new perspectives on story-telling. In any collection this approach would be brave and challenging. When taking on topics like sexual violence, abuse and environmental change it rises above those laudable aims and achieves something more profound: pure art, gracefully achieved.”
“Anecdotes is a highly original and an intentionally jarring hybrid collection in four distinct parts. Mockler’s bold and darkly playful approach to exploring some of the big issues of our time is an authentic and empowering call to action to anyone who’s paying attention.”
2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, Jury Notes:
"Innovative and risk-taking, Kathryn Mockler’s Anecdotes is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the possibilities of short fiction. From meta-fiction to flash, from one-liners to anecdotes, this book is bold and disruptive. Anecdotes engages with the challenges found in our unprecedented times of environmental collapse by subverting and rattling us out of our apathetic responses and conventional narratives. Its dark humour and absurdism will stay with the reader."
"More than mere Anecdotes, Kathryn Mockler delivers a kaleidoscope of compressed, heartbreaking, and hilariously vivid scenes from our age of anxiety. Visions and traumas, both personal and political, unfold as fabulations, autofictions, found texts and allegory (wherein “the past” laughs themselves silly at “the future’s” efforts to build their “dream home”). The end of the world is our daily companion—seen on a highway outside Las Vegas, or casually announced in a public library—but Mockler never lets us forget the very ordinary ways we experience endings: of friendships, love, self-confidence, or childhood illusions. How does one not despair? Mockler reminds us, in seemingly endless permutations of prose genre, form, and method, that “everything becomes beautiful when you realize nothing is going to last.”
2024 Victoria Butler Book Prize, Jury Notes:
"Anecdotes, by Kathryn Mockler, is a darkly humorous, playful, and inventive book that—through short fiction, one-act screenplays, prose poetry, and found poems—reveals humanity at its most deplorable with a straightforward nonchalance that makes its words resonate all the more deeply. Through her vulnerable, honest, and unsentimental characters, Mockler holds a mirror to a world damaged by misogyny and capitalist apathy, while still maintaining hope and compassion for humans and the planet we live on."
2024 Fred Kerner Book Award, Comments from the Judges:
“Kathryn Mockler challenges our preconceptions about what a short-story is and can be with this collection. Like Lydia Davis before her, she pushes the envelope on this form, opening new vistas for writers who are bound to follow her lead. Particularly engaging are the stories that play with form to bring us new perspectives on story-telling. In any collection this approach would be brave and challenging. When taking on topics like sexual violence, abuse and environmental change it rises above those laudable aims and achieves something more profound: pure art, gracefully achieved.”
“Anecdotes is a highly original and an intentionally jarring hybrid collection in four distinct parts. Mockler’s bold and darkly playful approach to exploring some of the big issues of our time is an authentic and empowering call to action to anyone who’s paying attention.”
2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, Jury Notes:
"Innovative and risk-taking, Kathryn Mockler’s Anecdotes is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the possibilities of short fiction. From meta-fiction to flash, from one-liners to anecdotes, this book is bold and disruptive. Anecdotes engages with the challenges found in our unprecedented times of environmental collapse by subverting and rattling us out of our apathetic responses and conventional narratives. Its dark humour and absurdism will stay with the reader."
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Anecdotes, by Kathryn Mockler is all over the shop, in the best possible way. Some surrealism. Some flash autofiction. A dark exchange on the climate crisis. A set of wry scenes between The Past and The Future. You can live a lifetime in these tiny, tidy pieces, and then some. —K.R. Wilson, author of Call Me Stan and Dear Uncle
"Anecdotes, by Kathryn Mockler, made me think about the environment in new ways, and it has a playful, anything-goes approach to fiction that I found refreshing."
—Kevin Chong, author of The Double Life of Benson Yu "Kathryn Mockler’s ‘Anecdotes’—about as inventive, playful and provocative a collection of short fiction as you’ll find. Published by that reliably boundary-pushing Canadian small press Book*hug."
—Novel Idea Bookstore "Mockler bravely looks into the void and reports what she sees. Again, Beckett comes to mind. Be honest. Be brave. Carry on."
—Michael Bryson, Art / Life "ANECDOTES by @themockler is a great reminder that experience combined with talent and imagination is what makes a great reading experience!"
.—Alison Gadsby, Writer and founder of Junction Reads: A Prose Reading Series |
Book*hug Press, 2023
Another Story Bookshop window. Photo by Book*hug Press.
"While it's clear Mockler had fun with some of the content, it's also humbling and reflective of today's laissez-faire attitude around politics and climate change, and stingingly honest about some of the dangers we face as young women in a world that is still very much a man's space."
—Lori, Goodreads |
"Just finished @themockler's brilliant new collection of stories. Dark twisty tales which might seem cyncial on first glance but really are deeply compassionate and empowering. I love how formally inventive they are. A range of forms and lots of surprising turns. Also, they implicitly illustratrate how life isn't a series of story arcs, epiphanies and "life lessons" but rather an accumulation of experiences which sum together over the span to make our life what it is. Five out of five thumbs up."
—Gary Barwin, author of Nothing the Same Everything Haunted and Yiddish for Pirates "You know those authors you can always count on? Authors whose books you know you are going to love before they ever enter your home? Kathryn Mockler is one of those authors for me. What fabulousness this book is. Go read it if you like. I LOVED it."
—Kimmy Beach, author of Nuala: A Fable and The Last Temptation of Bond "The darkness is then met with the understated. Absurd and satirical, while also poignant. And I’m here for all of it!"
—Shelfishly Lit, Goodreads "Tonally, the works collected here range from absurdist to tragic, offering a memorable selection of one writer’s haunting, searing prose.”
—Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn |
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"Writing fiction about the climate crisis is one of the strangest tasks a writer can take on. It demands walking the line between confrontation, acknowledgement, and entertainment. Metaphor might seem too gentle, and directness might alienate readers. Kathryn Mockler is so very good at it.
This collection of stories does not care what you think a collection of stories should be. Mockler blends traditional form with conversation deconstructions, one liners, and flash fiction. “Past and future” is a reoccurring motif, and provides an organic pathway to explore the trajectory of the climate crisis in our lifetime, and the media’s all too common “how did we get here?” refrain. Mockler’s look at social nostalgia is particularly satisfying, with wildly relatable stories that offer the possibility for rosy recollection, and then yank it away with a grin. Discomfort as art, grimy realism without a glamour filter, part coming of age and part end times." —Carleigh Baker, author of Last Woman, 49th Shelf |
"This book is pure genius. Most of the work deals with the intersection between the climate crisis, power, and patriarchy, which is dry in a précis but so damn funny in the hands of @themockler. Her strategies are varied and clever. Some stories are auto-fiction, while some read like short, deadpan jokes. One section is a collection of allegories or micro stories about The Past and The Future (with some guest appearances from The Present), who have a Laurel-and-Hardy type struggle getting along. Or maybe it's Bert and Ernie, where The Future is hopelessly cursed by the unthinking nonchalance of The Past's bad decisions. This is also a great book for studying a master of hybrid forms. And voice! If you want to learn about irony and tone, study this. (All of which means you can see Mockler being less interested in honouring a particular form or genre, and more in lifting up tone and messaging. It's undoing the genres of the past in service to help us hear better.)
There are allegories in here about childhood neglect, girls who are too drunk at parties to make good decisions with boys around, or domestic stories about violence and substance abuse. Mockler is taking classic experiences--things we've all done or heard from our friends--and finding the common kernel in each, how we treat each other as objects of our own craven desires, how we too easily disregard caring for others. It's a book about self-interest leading to selfishness, from the small and personal interaction to the large tableau of history. Kathryn Mockler is one of Canada's wryest writers alive today. Her mirror to our soul and legacy is funny and dark and devastatingly accurate." —Michael V. Smith, author of Queers Like Me |
There’s a primal chittering in my body whenever I read brain-meltingly good books that defy easy structural definitions. I feel immediate, deep respect for authors who break genre conventions with intelligence and intention and style. This book has plenty of all three.
Anecdotes is a fascinating collection of stories, moments, conversations, and thoughts that are delightful and disturbing—often at the same time. I adore what author Kathryn Mockler has done: creating a book that, when I was done reading it, felt like a complete story—felt whole—but was made up of these shiny and sharp shards of life. Shards that show how awkward life can be. How absurd and sad and strange. What I really loved about this book, perhaps most of all, was how it immersed me in these cringy moments. Left me feeling sticky with them. The fact that the cover is a sanitary pad stuck to a wall (which features in one of my favourite stories) is just *chef’s kiss*. —Hollay Ghadery, author of Fuse, Rebellion Box, and Widow Fantasies , 49th Shelf |
