Burrard Inlet

Tyler Keevil grew up in Vancouver, Canada, and in his mid-twenties moved to Wales, where he now lives. His short fiction has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies and has also won several awards, most notably the Writers' Trust of Canada Journey Prize. His first two novels, Fireball and The Drive, were both nominated for the Wales Book of the Year and both received the Wales Book of the Year People's Prize. He has worked as a tree planter and ice barge deckhand, as well as in factories, restaurants, video stores, and shipyards; he currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.

'Beneath the deceptively calm surface of these spare and beautiful stories, mad passions boil. There is a transatlantic tradition of studying the interaction between men and nature, in such figures as Hemingway, Carver, McGuane; now Keevil extends and enriches that lineage. He truly is that good.' --Niall Griffiths (author of Grits, Runt, and Kelly & Victor) 'Keevil's "Tokes from the Wild" is an assured story of a city boy who follows his friend into the countryside to spend a summer tree planting, which soon degenerates into a mess of weed smoke and recriminations.' --The Short Review 'Tyler Keevil's "Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening" tells of a snowboarder, missing on a mountainside not long after an accident, being tracked by hopeful rescuers. "Carving" has...storytelling rich in symbolism; subtle plot devices; and an ending that opens and sings.' --New Welsh Review 'There's real quality in Tyler Keevil's gripping tale of mountain rescue, "Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening".' --The Western Mail 'I read Tyler's amazing story "Sealskin" and was blown away. Beautiful writing...stunning' --Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows 'Vividly told in muscular prose, Keevil's stories are compelling evocations of isolation and strength in an often unforgiving landscape.' --Carys Bray, author of A Song for Issy Bradley 'Burrard Inlet is, first and foremost, a collection of short stories that tries to recognise the relationship between humans and nature through separate human identities...This is a piece of work that, without a doubt, should be added to a book-shelf of short-story lovers and novel aficionados alike.' --Wales Arts Review 'The masculine, often unforgiving scenarios which unfold here are a suitable fit for Keevil's economical - if elegant phrasing, but a strong moral core is ever-present, and sometimes vindication for the downtrodden.' --Buzz Magazine '"Sealskin" is a stunner: straightforward and unadorned, but humming with subsurface power. Possessed of a sturdy narrative backbone and unrelenting forward momentum, the story explores familiar themes - alienation, humanity's relationship to nature, coming of age, and loss of innocence - but does so in a way that seems fresh and vibrant. Strong physical details adjoin keen psychological insights, and Keevil handily builds scenes that reverberate with insight and potency. Keevil has accomplished something rare: a story about rough masculinity that brims with emotion and pathos.' --The Journey Prize judges 'Keevil's writing has been compared to Raymond Carver's and I can understand the comparison, although the voice is most definitely his own. As with Carver, Keevil's stories are like ink on wet blotting paper - there's a dense dark core of story arc, spare but telling detail and dialogue, yet around that dense mass is an aureola of implied back narrative and a sense of a continuum past the final full stop.' --CCQ Magazine