Richard Cumyn was born in Ottawa and has lived in Halifax for many years. He has written a novella, The View from Tamischeira (2003), as well as four short story collections, of which The Obstacle Course (2002) is his most recent. He is also fiction editor of the Antigonish Review.

"He is one of our finest story writers: exacting, surprising, deftly attuned both to language and to character, tough-minded and large-hearted at the same time - often within the same sentence." -- Steven Heighton, author of Afterlands

"Each of the stories in this powerful collection is a genuine surprise, unfolding with agility and grace through its unusual characters, unpredictable events, sharply distilled dialogue, and impeccably precise description." -- Diane Schoemperlen, author of At a Loss for Words

"Richard Cumyn is a writer who doesn't like to be boxed in. The stories collected here resist pigeonholing..." -- Quill & Quire

"Cumyn's great talent as a writer is how he mines ordinary situations to reveal a skewed vision of the world." -- Steven Mayoff, Carte Blanche Best of 2010

"... the prose and characterization are so good that I trust them at least as much as myself." -- Literary Review of Canada

"Cumyn has absolute control over the very clear and clever narration of his characters, and can draw them into madness and violence without also drawing his prose into histrionics." -- Antigonish Review