Alfred Cool

Al Cool (also known as Alfred Cool) is a Canadian writer who has won awards in the Canadian Authors Association's national short story contest.First Place (2014): Al Cool won first prize for his story, "When the Truth Won't Do".

Third Place (2013): His story, "My Phantom Looks Like the Man From Glad," was awarded third Place (2012) in the CanWrite! national short story contest.

Al studied English at Simon Fraser University, worked as a coast logger, built a career as a computer technologist and taught both privately and at the college level. Those experiences—boardrooms and boomtowns, classrooms and logging roads—give his stories their textured sense of place and the moral ambiguity that defines small-town noir. He has published seven novels and more than twenty short stories.

Al's work won first place (2013) and third place (2012) in the Canadian Authors Association’s CanWrite! national short story contest, with publications in The Danforth Review, The Otter, and several Canadian anthologies.

A lifelong environmental advocate and West Coast resident, Cool writes about ordinary people forced to choose between community and survival when power turns ruthless.

About the sailing ship in the background - the Pamir, the last commercial sailing vessel to leave Vancouver harbour. Lost 3 years later with all hands off the coast of the Canarias Islands (1957). The photo was taken off Cape Flattery at the southern tip of Vancourer Island during a 60 knot smokey southeaster...