When asked about the creative process behind the stories in her debut short story collection, This Keeps Happening, author H.B. Hogan explains that “they all started the same way: someone would floor me with something that they heard or saw or experienced. The squirrel. The weird kid. Or I’ll overhear something ridiculous on the subway or in the elevator. Then I’ll take that snippet and build a whole new story around it until it’s something that every reader can relate to, like self-immolation or coprophagia.”

The result of these inspirations is, as you might imagine, a collection full of short, punchy vignettes featuring underdogs, weirdos, and other people on the periphery. The Toronto Star praises it as a “darkly entertaining debut,” and author Michelle Winters calls the stories “dirty, fresh, and brutally funny, lingering on little human details until they’re just uncomfortable enough—then pushing a little farther. Their wickedness will stay with you for days.”

H.B.’s fiction has been published in Taddle Creek, This Magazine, and subTerrain, and she has a chapbook with Proper Tales Press.

H.B. lives in Toronto, where — when she is not writing or lawyering — she tries to catch her breath.

Appearing in: 29. Eternity in an Hour: The Power of Short Fiction

Website: www.hbhogan.com
Book: www.invisiblepublishing.com/product/this-keeps-happening/