Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2007)

Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design

The stories in Sugar Bush & Other Stories deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable ways. They make some ill-advised choices, which are driven by their naïve quests for “individuality” while at the same time having an almost pathological need to be loved by everyone – especially men. While the stories in Sugar Bush are intended for an adult audience, they employ some of the conventions of the young adult genre. They are simple, straight-ahead narratives. Part breathless teenaged confessional and part wistful and wiser looks back, Sugar Bush is the first collection of short fiction by award-winning author, Jenn Farrell.

Praise for Sugar Bush & Other Stories:

“Jenn Farrell smashes neat ideas – of childhood and adulthood, love and lust, home and away – to find their more interesting edges. Her stories are bright, sharp shards, winking and glittering and drawing blood.” (Annabel Lyon, author of The Best Thing for You and Oxygen)

“Farrell’s stories surprise with sophisticated twists and unexpected turns. In story after story, Farrell successfully rescues her characters from sinking into cliché, raising them above their very ordinary lives into the realm of the extraordinary. … Farrell’s writing style throughout is both whimsical and unpretentious, making Sugar Bush enjoyable and highly readable.” (Christine Walde, author of The Candy Darlings, in a review in Quill & Quire)

“There’s an old saying, ‘Good things come in small packages,’ and it was never more applicable than to this first collection of short stories by Vancouver’s Jenn Farrell. Where the typical trade paperback measures 14 cm by 22 cm, this one is a miniscule 12 x 16.

“Little in size, but huge in every other way.

“Sugar Bush & Other Stories offers 10 full-fledged short stories and two others that are no more than fragments, but each is impressive for directness of language, perfect-pitch dialogue and laugh-out-loud comedy. …

“It’s exciting to discover a fresh new talent … Once you’ve got it, you’ll love it.” (Prairie Fire)