University of Torontos and Brendan Bowles

Brendan Bowles: The sessional lecturer in the University of Torontos engineering communication program also won a spot at the Humber School for Writers correspondence program in creative writing, valued at $3,000, according to The Star. Bowles, who is working on both a novel and a play, said he got the idea for the story from an article he read in National Geographic about a tiny blue pond and Brendan Bowles was awarded $5,000 Wednesday evening for his winning entry, Living Fossils, in the Toronto Star and Toronto Public Library short story contest. Living Fossils does what we hope all stories do: it surprises us in unexpected ways, the contest judges said. The central character is an older woman but she is certainly not a sweet old lady and how she responds to the young person who has entered her life, and to time and its agents stripping the meat from the bones keeps us engaged to the very end. Full of the best details, effortlessly written cod tongues, slightly overcooked; the skull stored on the spice rack we find a world created whole, both believable and scary. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.