The Dead Husband Project

Perfect for readers of George Saunders, Jennifer Egan and Heather O'Neill, a rich and inventive collection of exquisite short stories by a major newcomer to Canadian literature.

In this deeply felt, compulsive and edgy work, Sarah Meehan Sirk shines a distinctive light on love and death in their many incarnations, pushing against the limits of the absurd while exposing piercing emotional truths about what it means to be gloriously, maddeningly alive.
     In "The Dead Husband Project," an artist who has planned to make an installation out of her terminally ill husband's dead body has to recalibrate when his diagnosis changes. In "The Date," an online dating match takes an unusual turn when the man who shows up to the restaurant has no face. In "Ozk," a young girl longs to connect with her socially isolated mother, a professor of mathematics who makes a radical discovery.
     Uncanny, sometimes violent, achingly sad and always profound, these stories showcase a writer with skill and empathy, and draw us in with a steady, unyielding grip.

SARAH MEEHAN SIRK is a writer, radio producer and broadcaster. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, PRISM international, Room, Joyland and Taddle Creek, and is anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories. At the CBC, she co-produced and hosted the 2015 Radio One series Stripped, worked on Q (now q) and DNTO, and was a founding producer of Day 6 with Brent Bambury. Before that, she produced a Toronto crime show, hosted sports programs, filed human rights reports with Ghanaian journalists in West Africa, and co-produced and hosted a short TV series on minor hockey that was nominated for a Gemini Award (it lost to the Olympics). She lives in Toronto with her young family and is working on her first novel.