Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye.  His novel, Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction.  

He edited Best Canadian Stories in 2022 and his Selected Stories is forthcoming from Biblioasis Press in 2024.  

Jarman won a Gold National Magazine Award in nonfiction, has twice won the Maclean-Hunter Endowment Award, won the Jack Hodgins Fiction Prize (BC) and the ReLit Prize (Newfoundland), was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Alistair MacLeod Prize, the Thomas Raddall Prize, was included in The Journey Prize Anthology and Best Canadian Stories, and short-listed for Best American Essays and the O. Henry Prize.

He has published in Walrus, Canadian Geographic, Brick, American Short Story, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Hobart, The Barcelona Review, Literatura Na Swiecie (Poland), Bombay Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Hong Kong Review, Vrij Nederland, and he reviews books for The Globe & Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. 

Jarman is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick where he is fiction editor of The Fiddlehead literary journal. 

A.S. BYATT on Mark Jarman

At last. It is very irritating to discover a wonderful book published too long ago to be an official "book of the year". I was talking to a German friend, a few years ago, and we were trying to think of the greatest short story ever. We agreed enthusiastically that it was Henry James's "The Beast in the Jungle". Martin then said reflectively, "Unless it is 'Burn Man on a Texas Porch'." I had never heard of that, nor of its author, Mark Anthony Jarman, a Canadian (Canadians specialise in great short stories - Munro, Atwood). Jarman's collection is called 19 Knives, and it is brilliant. The writing is extraordinary, the stories are gripping, it is something new. And now I can say so.

The Guardian, November 24, 2007