A bear runs amok in a luxury hotel. A daily swim at the local pool becomes a question of life or death. The champion of a border wall faces an unexpected adversary.

The twelve stories in Different Beasts ask what it means to be both human and monster. Shape-shifting waifs, haunted stuffies, scavenging drones, insectoid demon-gods, and mutant angels all come to life in this wildly imagined debut. As do broken soldiers, disgraced politicians, tired parents, ogres and children, opportunists and desperate survivors — human beasts each struggling with the animalian aspects of their nature.

Different Beasts won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the speculative fiction category.

J.R. McConvey's stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Matrix Lit Pop award. His poem Elegy for Jabronis made the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize longlist.