Sealskin: Stories

by Tyler Keevil

Winner of the Writers' Trust of Canada Journey Prize
Winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal
Shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year
Longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award
Longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize

A search and rescue volunteer looks for a missing snowboarder on Christmas Eve. Two brothers retreat to the woods to shoot a film in memory of their dead friend. A reclusive forestry worker picks up a hitchhiker on his way down Mount Seymour. A young man finds a temporary haven on the ice barge where he works. In this collection of award-winning stories, Tyler Keevil uses the rugged landscape of Vancouver’s Burrard Inlet―where the city meets the mountains and civilization meets the wild―as a backdrop for characters struggling against the elements, each other and themselves. Written in a lean, muscular style, these are stories awash in blood and brine, and steeped in images of freedom and confinement.

Tyler Keevil was born in Edmonton, grew up in Vancouver, and in his mid-twenties moved to Wales. He is the author of three novels—Fireball, The Drive and No Good Brother—and his short fiction has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies in Britain, Canada and the United States. He has received a number of awards for his writing, including the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, the Wales Book of the Year People’s Prize and the Writers’ Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize (for “Sealskin,” in this collection). Among other things, he has worked as a tree planter, ice barge deckhand and shipyard labourer; he is now a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff University.

Praise for
“I was blown away. Beautiful writing … stunning.” Miraim Toews (author of All My Puny Sorrows)

“Vividly told in muscular prose, Keevil's stories are compelling evocations of isolation and strength in an often unforgiving landscape.” Carys Bray (author of A Song For Issy Bradley)

“Beneath the deceptively calm surface of these spare and beautiful stories, mad passions boil. There is a transatlantic tradition of studying the interaction between men and nature, in such figures as Hemingway, Carver, McGuane; now Keevil extends and enriches that lineage. He truly is that good.” Niall Griffiths (author of Grits & Kelly & Victor)

“‘Sealskin’ is a straightforward and unadorned, but humming with subsurface power. Possessed of a sturdy narrative backbone and unrelenting forward momentum, the story explores familiar themes — alienation, humanity's relationship to nature, coming of age, and loss of innocence — but does so in a way that seems fresh and vibrant. Strong physical details adjoin keen psychological insights, and Keevil handily builds scenes that reverberate with insight and potency. Keevil has accomplished something a story about rough masculinity that brims with emotion and pathos.” The Writers Trust of Canada Journey Prize judges 2014 (Craig Davidson, Saleema Nawaz, and Steven W. Beattie)

“Tyler Keevil's ‘Carving Through Woods on a Snowy Evening’ tells of a snowboarder, missing on a mountainside not long after an accident, being tracked by hopeful rescuers. ‘Carving’ has ... storytelling rich in symbolism; subtle plot devices; and an ending that opens and sings.” --New Welsh Review

“Keevil's writing has been compared to Raymond Carver’s and I can understand the comparison, although the voice is most definitely his own.

429 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 18, 2019

About the author

Tyler was raised in Vancouver, Canada. He first came to the UK in 1999 to study English at Lancaster University. He returned home to finish his degree, and after graduating undertook a variety of bizarre jobs, working as a treeplanter, a landscape gardener, a deckhand on a fishing barge, a ‘greenhorn’ in the shipyards, a restaurant busser and a kayak shop assistant. After paying back his student loan, and saving up some money, he moved to Prague to try his hand at being a starving writer – the only problem being that he didn’t know how to write yet. The money ran out before he learned, and after a brief stint living in Birmingham, he moved to Wales in 2003.

While working part-time cleaning toilets at a petrol station, Tyler committed to learning the craft, and after picking up a handful of short fiction awards – including a Writer of the Year Award from Writers Inc. of London – he began selling his stories to magazines. He is interested both in literary and slipstream fiction, and has been published in New Welsh Review, Planet, Transmission, Dream Catcher, Black Static, and On Spec, among others. A translation of his story, ‘Masque of the Red Clown’ has also recently been commissioned by the French-Canadian magazine, Solaris. Tyler has also written for the screen; a short film he wrote recently aired on ITV Wales, whilst another picked up the Welsh Dragon Award at the Newport International Film Festival. Welsh editors have always been supportive of his writing, from Arthur Smith to Dafydd Prys to Francesca Rhydderch to Helle Michelson, and now more recently Lucy Llewellyn at Parthian.

Like most Canadians, Tyler enjoys his winter sports, including hockey and snowboarding, but since coming to Wales he has discovered the wonders of hiking and camping – particular along the Pembrokeshire coast. He currently works part-time in a factory near his hometown of Llanidloes, and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire.