28 Feb If you’re in Halifax Monday evening…

Kris Bertin, author by day, Bearly’s beer-slinger by night, launches his long-awaited collection of short stories, Monday night at 7, at the House of Blues and Ribs, 1269 Barrington St., Halifax.

This just might be the 2016 Nova Scotia event you’ll want to brag about having attended 30 years from now, when Bertin is a celebrated Canadian of letters.

Bad Things Happen is edited by Alexander MacLeod, published by Biblioasis, and celebrated in the Toronto Star, which named Bertin one of 10 young Canadian writers to watch.

Quill & Quire singles out “Bad Things Happen” and “Your #1 Killer,” the first and last stories in the collection, for special mention:

In the first, set in a bleak New Brunswick town “so rural it doesn’t even exist” (as Bertin quipped in an interview), the restless and bored adolescent girl narrator breaks into the porn-strewn hovel of a gas station attendant she and her friend have crushes on.In the last, a mother struggles with her angry, secretive, and troubled son – who may or may not be returning home after brushes with the law (he’s as unforthcoming as a stone). In each of these pieces, Bertin conjures tense and memorably vivid tableaux that rest on a strong foundation of fraught understanding and hit-and-miss communication between emotionally invested individuals.

A wonderful group of people surround Bertin at Bearly’s. If you’re anywhere near Halifax Monday night, you won’t be sorry you took this in.