Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City, to read February 12 at Winter’s Tales

Not that long ago, novelist Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City, completed UNB's graduate program in creative writing and published his first book of stories, Rust and Bone (2005). Since then, this high-energy writer has been short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction and seen the film version of a Rust and Bone story premier at the Cannes Film Festival. With imaginative drive similar to that of his admirer Stephen King, Davidson has published three literary novels and five novels in the horror genre under the pseudonyms Nick Cutter and Patrick Lestewka.

Davidson will read from his fiction on Thursday, February 12, at 7:30 p.m. in Confederation Centre Art Gallery. His reading is sponsored by the UPEI English Department with support from The Canada Council for the Arts. A book signing will follow.

While he rapidly became a favourite of horror fiction fans, Davidson's literary writing gained the public's attention with the success of the French film Rust and Bone (De Rouille et D'os) at Cannes in 2012. The Giller nomination for Cataract City raised his profile, but the novel's artistic excellence and strong narrative appeal for readers are primarily responsible for his emergence in the literary limelight.

Clive Barker, the popular fantasy and horror author and film director, writes 'There is a strikingly original tone to Mr. Davidson's stories. The prose is spare yet elegant, the insights are fresh and real, and best of all there is a boundless humanity...a love of life that is beautifully woven with an acute sense of its darkness.'

Davidson says on his website that he 'has written a few books... about boxing and dog fights and zombies and werewolves and lunatic prison inmates... and vampires and sex addicts.... Not all in the same book, mind you.'

Davidson will bring his potent blend - as Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club writes - of 'comedy and horror, cruelty and mercy' to the Island. 'Stay a spell,' writes Davidson on his website. You will be spellbound.