In Process
At present I am in the last throes of writing a contemporary novel set in Northern Ontario in which a middle-aged woman travels to the family cottage to scatter the ashes of her husband, father and twin sister, only to discover that a mysterious and menacing stranger has claim staked a portion of her property. Needless to say, in the course of dealing with this intrusion, she must also contend with her troubled past, her adversarial relationship with her sister and her own self-destructive tendencies. Surface Rights is about belonging, family, dogs, fear of fat, ghosts and place.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council for Surface Rights and to thank those presses that recommended my work for a Writers Reserve Grant in the 2007-2008 round of funding – Porcupine’s Quill, Sumach Press and Your Scrivener Press.

Here is an excerpt from Surface Rights.

Most Recent

  • The Uncharted Heart, published by Knopf Canada, 2001. These stories bring to life the harsh struggles, the dreams, the greed, the obsessions, the xenophobia—and the love—experienced by the traders, trappers and prospectors who flocked to northern Ontario during the Porcupine Gold Rush (1900-1922). Here is an excerpt from Paper Son, which is about a Chinese houseboy working in Timmins and his relationship with his employer’s wife.

Published Books

  • Cry of Bees is the story of a little girl growing up in a Southern Indiana boarding house full of decrepit old ladies. It's definitely what I'd call black humor. Out of print for many years, it can be found in most libraries. 
  • Constant Fire, according to my publisher's catalog, is "a book-length collection about the past and present of the Cherokee nation. The poetry of nature, the passion of ancient folk-song, the soul of a people, they're all here in this elegant suite of stories." Couldn't have said it better myself.  Here’s an excerpt from Long Man the River, which won the 1994 Journey Prize for most accomplished piece of short fiction to be published in Canada in a given year and/or to order it either through me or by ordering directly from Oberon Press.

Unpublished, so far

  • The Mummy of Casteldurante, a novella set in nineteenth-century Italy. The story was inspired by the Mummies of Urbania, natural mummies created by the action of a particular type of mould upon previously buried corpses, on display in that town's Chiesa dei Morti. The Mummy of Casteldurante forms part of an Italian collection, which includes the stories Alabaster and Metallica. Here is an excerpt.
  • The Geomancer's Compass is my version of Weird Tales. Here is an excerpt.
  • Northern Days and Southern Nights is an eclectic mix of contemporary stories written over the past decade. Here is an excerpt from a story about a wedding: Wedding Belles
  • The Vision is a modern-day saint's life, driven by the galloping sexuality which made hagiography the pulp fiction of choice in an earlier era and operating on the premise that there are, indeed, sacred loci inhabited by numina of some dark, elemental stripe.  As two would-be saints rush towards a collision in the sacred grove, the convoluted history of the exhausted and spiritually depleted Buck family and its connections to the region and its inhabitants is exposed and unraveled.  Here is an excerpt, which appeared first in Quarry Magazine and then in the Voices and Echoes Anthology, Discriminatio Spirituum.  Editors: interested in looking at the manuscript of this book? Please e-mail my agent, Frances Hanna.
  • The Trader of Qualla. The Cherokee, more than any other Native American people, embraced white culture. In the end, all their efforts at emulation and assimilation came to naught: the American government under Andrew Jackson evicted them from their ancestral lands, driving them west along what came to be known as The Trail of Tears to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. A quarter of the nation died on that trail, perhaps as many as  4,000  people. The Trader of Qualla is about the intense love-hate relationship between the two peoples which was to end in the destruction of the Cherokee way of life; it is the story of a young Cherokee boy infatuated with a white stranger and a fabulous magical crystal called an ulunsuti. Here's an excerpt, Dancing Sally, originally published in Exile. This manuscript is completed and ready for publication. Editors: interested in looking at the manuscript of this book? Please e-mail my agent, Frances Hanna.

2008/Melissa Hardy