Books by Karen Hofmann

>Third Place in the Prose Category at the 2019 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada! All Lit Up Book Club SelectionIn this provocative collection of short stories, Karen Hofmann creates characters who struggle to connect or disconnect from entanglements and relationships. With ironic accuracy and sensuous imagery, Hofmann considers a range of human foibles: a newlywed couple who transform into feral beasts during the hardships of a remote research expedition; backbiting faculty members who strip down during a post-conference BBQ; an heretical nun who explores the possibility of a new life by imaginatively excavating the fossils of BC's Burgess Shale; and an ambitious bylaw officer determined to make her mark on the city's streets.In Echolocation, Karen Hofmann has found new ways to sound the depths of the human heart.

Karen Hofmanns empathetic and cathartic novel pieces together the lives of five members of the Lund family following their enforced dispersal after the death of the father and the hospitalisation of the mother in the remote West Coast community of Butterfly Lake. It explores their self-doubts and aspirations in the ways they cope with their separation and reunion through their work and personal relationships, and reveals the ways in which their past is filtered through memory and desire. It also skillfully exposes a Vancouver class system from the perspectives of diverse socio-economic conditions and lifestyles. The book is character-driven and well-wrought, with a tenderness that propels the reader forward alongside the Lunds who are learning to fuse together as a chosen family.