Where the Pavement Turns to Sand (Malarkey Books, 2023) is a collection of working class, everyday heartbreaks and bad decisions. In a refreshing rural Canadian setting, the characters in these slice of life tales stumble through divorce, debt, bad sex, and boring jobs, but also curling robots, aliens, jackalopes, wendigo, lots of legs wet with urine, and (maybe) sasquatches with an unexpected whimsy. What makes it work is Birnie’s signature dark humor and conversational style that makes every story feel like it was your neighbor telling it to you over a beer around a campfire, or at the rink. Surprising, entertaining, grimy and weird.”

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, family man, and beer league hockey player living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of Where the Pavement Turns to Sand (Malarkey Books) and Missing Like Teeth: An oral history of Winnipeg underground rock 1990-2001 (Eternal Cavalier Press).

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