God Telling a Joke and Other Stories

"God Telling a Joke and Other Stories is a collection of new stories by the author of Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, named Book of the Year at the Saskatchewan Book Awards and a finalist for the ReLit Award in 2007.Among the characters in the collection's 19 stories are a 99-year-old stand-up comedian wearily challenging God to deliver the punch line; a lightning strike survivor whose luck finally runs out; a Princeton-educated trapper who transforms himself into the King of the Jews; a young Second World War veteran unable to talk another vet out of suicide; a carnival sideshow ""geek"" with a glass jaw; a stroke victim who suffers a different type of heart attack; and a writer dubbed by an award jury as ""a connoisseur of longing."" The stories range from laugh-out-loud comedy to wry satire to heart-wrenching romance to sober meditations on the nature of beauty, truth, life and death. The stories show Margoshes, a master story-teller, at the top of his game. "

Dave Margoshes is a Saskatoon-area writer whose work has appeared widely in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies, including six times in the Best Canadian Stories volumes. He was a finalist for the Journey Prize in 2009. He's published fifteen books of poetry and fiction, including Bix's Trumpet and Other Stories, which won two prizes at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. He also won the Poetry Prize in 2010 for Dimensions of an Orchard, and has been nominated several other times for Saskatchewan Book Awards. His most recent title, a collection of linked short stories, A Book of Great Worth, was published in spring 2012 and was named one of Amazon.ca's Top Hundred Books of the Year.