Fiction by Jennifer Duncan

Sanctuary & Other Stories

Sanctuary & Other Stories

Jennifer Duncan’s debut collection of fiction, Sanctuary and Other Stories, introduces a brilliant and innovative new voice to Canadian literature. These fourteen stories, interconnected and set in the Toronto punk scene of the 1980s, are startling in the humour and grace they bring to a subculture too often presented in the media as one-dimensional and anti-social. In a language both passionate and wryly self-aware, Jennifer Duncan creates a world that is totally convincing in its detail and its rich humanity.

Critical Comment

“Letter-perfect, edgy chronicles of life in the Gen-X zone. Duncan writes with precision, humour, and confidence. Delightful ...”

— Sarah Sheard, author of The Swing Era and The Hypnotist

“These nervy wired stories fibrillate with the energy of their raw inquiry into the trippy fastdance of contemporary identities adrift and amok in downtown T.O. and environs; at this level, the stories revel in a stark new naturalism sharply attuned to a stark new milieu. But these are stories that also preen, first, in language, at once swooning through their speakers’ poetic riffs and disowning them with an elaborate knowing shrug.”

— Canadian Literature

“This is a strong woman’s voice, with no intention at all of hiding the obstacles set in her characters’ paths by other people’s exploitation, perceptions, and demands.”

— The Link, 2000

Author Jennifer Duncan

Author Biography

Jennifer Duncan is a fifth generation Torontonian. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire, Matrix, CV2, and Blood & Aphorisms, and she is currently completing her first novel.

Sanctuary and Other Stories won the David McKeen Prize for best Creative Writing thesis at Concordia University in 1998. The book was also shortlisted in 2000 for both the Toronto Book Awards and the Upper Canada Brewing Short Fiction Award.