English Professor Richard Lemm Publishes Short Story Collection

Richard Lemm, an award-winning author and a professor of Canadian and English Literature and Creative Writing at UPEI, has released his first collection of short stories. Entitled Shape of Things to Come, the book traces Lemm’s journey from the west coast to the east.

The eleven stories run readers through the gauntlet of sexual tensions and emotional conflicts, where people are forced to confront their choices and grapple with connections they would not have chosen but cannot live without. Hard-living characters follow their own paths through relationships with parents and siblings, friends and lovers, discovering and sometimes crossing their limits as they try to find their own way in the world. A thirty-something man takes a chance on finding love after he encounters an exotic opera singer on an airplane. Two brothers face their own ghosts as they come to terms with the death of their father. A young man tries to live with his friends’ idea of justice after one of them crosses the line. The stories are decidedly masculine — sometimes apologetically so — but always honest.

Richard Lemm has been a faculty member at the Banff School of Fine Arts, and a writer-in-residence and poetry instructor for various community colleges, regional libraries, public school districts, and summer writing programs across the country. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, as well as the biography, Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger.

Shape of Things to Come is published by Acorn Press. The cover art is the painting Domiciles, a triptych by Charlottetown artist Brenda Whiteway. It was launched on Sunday, December 9, at Casa Mia Café, 131 Queen Street, Charlottetown.