Almost immediately upon Julie Bird's return to the small port town where she was raised, everyday life is turned upside down. Julie's Gulf War vet father, Marty, has been on the losing side of a battle with PTSD for too long. A day of boating takes a dramatic turn when a majestic blue whale beaches itself and dies. A blond stranger sets up camp oceanside: she's an agitator, musician-impersonator and armchair philosopher named Jennie Lee Lewis — and Julie discovers she's connected to her father's mysterious trip to New Mexico 25 years earlier. As the blue whale decays on the beach, more wildlife turns up dead — apparently by suicide — echoing Marty's deepest desire. But Julie isn't ready for a world without her father. (From ECW Press)

Land Mammals and Sea Creatures is on the shortlist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

"I wrote the novel for my MFA thesis at the University of British Columbia. I had to write a novel within a certain timeframe. The first idea that randomly came to me was about the environment — what if it got so bad that the animals didn't want to live anymore? Then it was about coming up with characters that would go around this scenario.

"I've written a lot of short stories with magical and fabulous elements to them. Fantastical elements are much easier to sustain in a short story because you can just stay completely in that imaginary space. I did find it a challenge for the novel in trying to maintain both the realistic storyline of the characters and then this magical element with the animals.

"I think they worked out, in a parallel fashion, in the end. They didn't necessarily directly inform each other, but they both had their own track within the story."