I’m excited to announce the launch of Smoke, a book of interconnected short stories developed as my MFA thesis and published by Buckrider Books (Wolsak & Wynn). I’m so grateful for John Vinga’s guidance and for the help and support of my classmates in the MFA opt-res program workshops.

Smoke is my first adult work, a collection of short stories that is both searing and thought-provoking. Smoke features a cast of characters across Canada and New Zealand, showing us glimpses into their lives of loss and heartbreak. In these eleven linked stories, I take a hard look at intergenerational trauma and their impact on characters from multiple points of view, but my characters are not victims — anything but. Guilt, self-reflection, compassion, and forgiveness are central themes in this collection of stories that help us understand the degree of responsibility we hold toward the events that happen to us in life. 

“In each of Nicola Winstanley’s powerful stories we feel for and feel tender toward, even love, these characters trying to navigate through their lives the best they can, with earnest hope and often unrecognized resilience as they find ways to make do and, despite everything, continue to be themselves, to find agency and possibility. Smoke leaves the reader looking into the future, wondering what will become of these people, what will become of all of us, recognizing how lives are often betrayed by the way the world is — often because of the brokenness of men — but also buoyed by the very humanness, the fragility and strength of the women. Smoke isn’t a sugar pill, but something far more effective: a clear-eyed and compassionate tonic for strength and courage.” – Gary Barwin, author of Imagining Imagining and Yiddish for Pirates

Smoke is now available wherever books are sold or borrowed.