The small southern Ontario town known as The Pump lies at the crossroads of this world's violence — a tainted water supply, an apathetic municipal government, the Gothic decay of rural domesticity — and another's.

In Brooman's interconnected stories, no one is immune to The Pump's sacrificial games. Lighthouse dwellers, Boy Scouts, queer church camp leaders, love-sick and sick-sick writers, nine-year-old hunters, art-eaters — each must navigate the swamp of their own morality while living on land that is always slowly (and sometimes very quickly) killing them. (From Invisible Publishing)

Sydney Hegele is a writer living in Toronto. Their story The Bottom was shortlisted for The Malahat Review's 2020 Open Season Awards. They have been published in American Chordata, Thorn Literary Magazine and other literary journals. The Pump, their first book, won the 2022 ReLit Award for short fiction.