First Things First: Early and Uncollected Stories

"Schoemperlen's inventive language and narrative structures encourage readers to be free 'from the prison of everyday thinking.'"--The New York Times Book Review

First Things First gathers eighteen of the best of Diane Schoemperlen's earliest and uncollected stories, with several being published in book form for the first time. Playfully inventive, comic, moving, and profound, this collection will reinforce Schoemperlen's importance as one of the leading short story writers of her generation.

Diane Schoemperlen is the author of twelve books, most recently By the Book: Stories & Pictures.

Diane Schoemperlen has published several critically acclaimed collections of short fiction and three novels, In the Language of Love (1994), Our Lady of the Lost and Found (2001), and At A Loss For Words (2008). Her 1990 collection, The Man of My Dreams, was shortlisted for both the Governor-General’s Award and the Trillium. Her collection Forms of Devotion: Stories and Pictures won the 1998 Governor-General’s Award for English Fiction, and her 2014 collection, By the Book: Stories and Pictures was compared to the works of Lydia Davis, David Markson and Padgett Powell by The New York Times Sunday Book Review. In 2008, she received the Marian Engel Award from the Writers’ Trust of Canada. In 2012, she was Writer-in-Residence at Queen’s University. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.