God Isn't Here Today

WINNER OF THE 2023 RELIT AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 INDIGENOUS VOICES AWARDS

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE

For fans of Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates, and Karen Russell, the stories in Francine Cunningham's debut collection God Isn't Here Today ricochet between form and genre, taking readers on a dark, irreverent, yet poignant journey led by a unique and powerful new voice.

Driven by desperation into moments of transformation, Cunningham's characters are presented with moments of choice--some for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to God's office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his truck's song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide, but comes with a burden of its own.

Even as they flirt with the fantastic, Cunningham's stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature--and that redemption can arise where we least expect it.

Francine Cunningham is an award-winning Indigenous writer, artist and educator. Her debut book of poems On/Me (Caitlin Press) was nominated for 2020 BC and Yukon Book Prize and a 2020 Indigenous Voices Award. She is a recent winner of The Indigenous Voices Award in the 2019 Unpublished Prose Category and of The Hnatyshyn Foundation's REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. Her fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review's Far Horizon's Prose shortlist, Joyland, The Puritan and more. Learn more at www.francinecunningham.ca.