Coyote, Ivan E. 1969–

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Coyote, Ivan E. 1969–

PERSONAL:

Born August 11, 1969, in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Hobbies and other interests: Knitting, doing leatherwork, playing street hockey.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

CAREER:

Musician, storyteller, and author. Has also worked as a writing instructor at Capilano College; ‘Round-Up,’ CBC, writer in residence.

WRITINGS:

Close to Spider Man: Stories, Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2000.

One Man's Trash: Stories, Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2002.

Loose End: Stories, Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2005.

Bow Grip (novel), Arsenal Pulp Press (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2005.

Also wrote CD-ROM You're A Nation. Contributor to periodicals, including Georgia Strait, Broken Pencil, Nerve, Curve, and Common Ground. Xtra West, columnist.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ivan E. Coyote is the author of several collections of short stories, as well as the novel, Bow Grip. Her debut collection, Close to Spider Man: Stories, deals with remembrances from the author's childhood in Canada's Yukon Territory. As Herizons contributor Maria Stan Borough noted, these stories ‘captured the essence of how a life unfolds with gentle honesty.’ The interlocking tales of this first collection depict a fictional protagonist very much like Coyote herself. She grows up in the Yukon, living a tom-boy existence, one that ultimately makes her find the boy in herself. One of the stories, ‘Manifestation,’ deals with the protagonist's growing awareness of her true sexuality. A dirt moustache results from a day's work as a landscaper, and she decides to leave it there, much to the dismay of her fellow workers. ‘With an adept and concise hand, Coyote is able to take the reader to new and unexpected places, the true gift of a talented writer,’ Borough further remarked. Additional praise came from Lambda Book Report reviewer Rachel Kramer Bussel, who found Close to Spider Man ‘powerful in its imagery of growing up queer and trans in the Yukon."

In her second collection, One Man's Trash: Stories, Coyote also features tales of the Yukon, as well as road trips, stories about family, love affairs, and the casual enjoyments of everyday life. Bussel, again writing in the Lambda Book Report, stated: ‘It's the shortest stories that work the most magic, that capture a moment or a personality and reframe them, turning something as mundane as a childhood game or grocery shopping into a chance to meet someone new or see the world in a slightly different way.’ For Bussel, the stories in One Man's Trash are ‘the essence of simplicity.’ Reviewing Coyote's third collection, Loose End: Stories, in Herizons, T.L. Cowan called it a ‘Narnia for the bent,’ and a ‘a secret passageway into a world that is, well, open.’ Cowan went on the observe that Coyote ‘writes stories of queer life in that plain-spoken condensed-milk-in-tea kind of way that simply refuses to make a big deal out of it all."

Coyote turned to a longer format with her debut novel, Bow Grip, a story about ‘a forty-two year old straight mechanic from Alberta whose wife leaves him for his hockey buddy's wife, and how trading a suicidal man a used car for an ancient cello changed his life forever,’ as Coyote described the novel on her Web site. Reviewing the work in the online Matrix Magazine, James Moran termed this debut novel ‘a fine, sparse, and moving first effort.’ Writing for Xtra, reviewer Sandra Alland called the work ‘a straightforward, almost classical story, with a mystery twist,’ as well as a ‘page-turner that also mirrors the intricacies of life.’ Kris Rothstein, reviewing the novel in Herizons, thought the ‘novel questions distinct and conventional families and communities, showing the many ways we are tied to one another.’ And Booklist contributor David Pitt concluded: ‘Keep your eyes on this Canadian writer; with a little luck and some word of mouth, she could make quite a splash sometime soon."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2007, David Pitt, review of Bow Grip, p. 23.

Books in Canada, May, 2003, review of One Man's Trash: Stories, p. 22.

Curve, April, 2003, Rachel Pepper, ‘Ivan E. Coyote,’ p. 42.

Herizons, fall, 2001, Maria Stan Borough, review of Close to Spider Man: Stories; summer, 2006, T.L. Cowan, review of Loose End: Stories; summer, 2007, Kris Rothstein, review of Bow Grip.

Lambda Book Report, February, 2001, Rachel Kramer Bussel, review of Close to Spider Man, p. 20; January, 2003, Rachel Kramer Bussel, ‘Beauty Secrets,’ p. 18.