There’s a celebrity among us. Ian Colford made the national news on November 29 when his book of short stories Evidence (Porcupine’s Quill Press, March 2008) was listed as one of the top five first fiction books of 2008 in the Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books of the Year.

Evidence, which was launched at the Killam Library on April 24, 2008, is a series of “linked stories” narrated by Kostandin Bitri, a wanderer who has been uprooted by war from an unnamed eastern European country. Ian says, “My favourite books have always been those that persuade the reader to turn the page, not because of a plot-driven story line, but because the world the author has created is so odd and so compelling — that is, familiar while at the same time utterly outside our experience.” The publication of Evidence last spring was hailed in two excellent reviews, one in the Books section of the Globe and Mail (July 19/08), where Jim Bartley called it “a rich, shadowed, mind-tweaking puzzle of a book”; and in The Star (July 13/08), which described Evidence as “something of an exotic work of Canadian fiction, presenting history and geography in expressionistic, psychological terms.”

Visit Ian’s website for more info about him and his writing.

Ian is currently working on a novel set in South America during a period of political instability. Keep an eye on the Globe’s book section because it’s obvious our talented colleague has a lot more to say!