"Powerful. . . . Full of dark nostalgia." —NATHAN ENGLANDER

"A literary high-wire act, not for the faint of heart." —ALISSA YORK

An unflinching and masterful collection of award-winning stories, Willem de Kooning's Paintbrush is a career-making debut. Ranging from an island holiday gone wrong to a dive bar on the upswing to a yuppie mother in a pricey subdivision seeing her worst fears come true, these deftly written stories are populated by barkeeps, good men down on their luck, rebellious teens, lonely immigrants, dreamers and realists, fools and quiet heroes. In author Kerry-Lee Powell's skillful hands, each character, no matter what their choices, is deeply human in their search for connection. Powell holds us in her grasp, exploring with a black humour themes of belonging, the simmering potential for violence and the meaning of art no matter where it is found, and revealing with each story something essential about the way we see the world.

A selection of these stories have won significant awards including the Boston Review fiction contest and The Malahat Review's Far Horizons award for short fiction. For readers of Lorrie Moore, Denis Johnson and Michael Christie.