Short Fiction. "In SMELL IT, Hal Niedzviecki inhales and exhales vulnerability--especially men's--in deep, sad, gleeful sighs. Frailties, fears and love are soulmates in this fresh prose. Niedzviecki's stories turn our frantic heads over and over, revealing astonished, difficult hearts"--Lynne Tillman. Hal Niedzviecki is a correspondent for CBC's Brave New Waves and a colmunist for Exclaim! He is also co-editor and founder of Broken Pencil magazine, the guide to independent culture in Canada. SMELL IT! appeared originally as a full-text online internet edition in November 1997.
Hal Niedzviecki is a writer, culture commentator and editor whose work challenges preconceptions and confronts readers with the offenses of everyday life. Hal works in both the fiction and nonfiction genres. He is the author of books including, in fiction, the novel Ditch, and his latest novel The Program. In nonfiction, his most recent work is The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (www.peepdiaries.com). He is the current fiction editor and the founder of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts ( www.brokenpencil.com). He edited the magazine from 1995 to 2002. Hal’s writing has appeared in newspapers, periodicals and journals across North America including the Utne Reader, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Life, Walrus, Geist, and This Magazine. He was the recipient of the Alexander Ross Award for Best New Magazine Writer at the 1999 National Magazine Awards and has presented his work at events across North America including the International Festival of Authors in Toronto. Once dubbed the “guru of independent/alternative action” by the Toronto Star, Niedzviecki is committed to exploring the human condition through provocative fiction and non-fiction that charts the media saturated terrain of ever shifting multiple identities at the heart of our fragmenting age. For excerpts, reviews, samples of past articles and more, visit Hal’s website: www.smellit.ca