Something You Were, Might Have Been, or Have Come to Represent

In the stories of Something You Were, Might Have Been, or Have Come to Represent, young singer-songwriters strive for fame and identity in the indie music scene. A young woman’s creative process is plagued with pop cultural dissonance during a European soul-search; a first year university student has an existential crisis and eats the flowers that have started to appear on her doorstep; a call centre employee whose name newly yields a Google search hit is frustrated with his unimpressed co-workers; and one Montreal resident reaches the apogee of success and hits rock-bottom, all in the same year. With dry humour and twists of plot, Jay Winston Ritchie crafts a world replete with lasting images that resonate as both troubling and real. Each story poses an inquiry into how we shape our identity—which parts of ourselves we cull and which remain outside our locus of control.

Jay Winston Ritchie is the author of the poetry chapbook How to Appear Perfectly Indifferent While Crying on the Inside (Metatron). He lives in Montreal, where he is the editor-in-chief of The Void.