This Unlikely Soil - Paperback

by Andrea Routley (Author)

In This Unlikely Soil, prize-winning writer Andrea Routley delivers stories of queer women navigating love and life against the lush, isolated backdrop of Canada's West Coast.

A dog that bites, a bear suffering from a hemorrhoid, an aggressive willow tree, berried-up Dungeness crabs and erotic mussels... The dense West-Coast landscape of This Unlikely Soil echoes the fraught search for connection of the rural-dwelling queer characters in this quintet of novellas. Finalist for the Malahat Review Novella Prize, this sophomore collection from Lambda Literary Award-finalist Andrea Routley explores the queer state of wandering, violence, and loss with surprising humour and compassion.

Author Biography

Andrea Routley is a writer and editor. Her work has appeared in literary magazines, such as Geist and The Fiddlehead Review. In 2020, her novella, This Unlikely Soil, was shortlisted for the Malahat Review Novella Prize. Her debut collection, Jane and the Whales (Caitlin Press, 2013), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She is an MFA candidate at UBC (Okanagan) where she is at work on her third book. Though a small-town queer at heart, she currently resides in Vancouver, BC.