Taking on the social collective, the performance of death, the political battleground, and the search for existential happiness with fearlessness and verve, Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For is full of sharp observation, irreverence, wit, and compassion.
in this dark, often funny, deeply compelling collection that asks how we locate, create, and avoid meaning in our lives. These are stories about people and relationships challenged by death and redeemed by art.
Satirical, political, personal, and tender, they take us to funerals, protests, art galleries, to the dark side of the service industry, and through cities on fire.
Greentree pulls off something marvelous in these stories which are at once careening, jagged, yet spare, crafted; sardonic, yet intimate; earthy, yet laced with poetic resonance. At times, real menace lurks, offset by Greentree’s brilliant humour, wit, and skill at ripping back the veils of absurdity and pretension that so often permeate our social landscapes. You’ll be hooked from the first sentence of the opening story.”
Jeanette Lynes
author of The Apothecary’s Garden
Haunting and soulful, tender and perverse, this extraordinary collection explores loss and longing and how perilously complicated love can be. Readers drawn to rich prose and gut-wrenching aha moments will devour these riveting tales.”
Fran Kimmel, author of
No Good Asking
Leslie Greentree is the author of the award-winning short story collection A Minor Planet for You. Her second book of poetry, go-go dancing for Elvis, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Leslie co-wrote the play Oral Fixations with her life partner Blaine Newton, which was produced in 2014 by Ignition Theatre. She has won CBC literary competitions for poetry and fiction, and has been shortlisted for Writer’s Guild of Alberta and Humber Creative Nonfiction awards.
Her new short story collection is Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For, published September 2022 (University of Calgary Press, Brave & Brilliant series).