18 Alexander MacLeod
Alexander MacLeod’s idea of a promotional tour was loading up the car with books, picking up his publisher,
hitting the festival and reading circuit, and, ideally, returning home with a lot fewer books. The book was Light Lifting,
and promoting it became much easier after it made the long list for the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize. MacLeod’s long-gestating first book, a
collection of unobvious and unpredictable short stories, went on to claim a place in the final five for Canada’s pre-eminent literary award and was cited
by the jury as “a careful marriage of the lyric and the narrative.” Alexander MacLeod started these stories when he was in his early twenties and finished
them in his late thirties. Asked why it took him so long to become an overnight sensation, he simply replied: “Life.” There were three kids to be raised,
an education to be finished and a living to be made teaching at St. Mary’s University in Halifax. The unarguable result, nonetheless, is seven meticulously
crafted stories.
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