Me with C, who likes to march around banging a pot on her head whenever I try to write.
P U B L I S H I N G H I S T O R Y
{ b o o k s }
Dark All Day: stories
Imprint: John Gosslee Books, Lynchburg, VA
ISBN 978-0-9833655-8-7
Format: 5.5 x 8.5 paper
# of pages: 182 pages
Published: 2013
Punishing Ugly Children: stories
Imprint: Killick Press, St. John's, NL
ISBN 978-1-897174-65-4
Format: 5.5 x 8.5 paper
# of pages: 160 pages
Published: 2010
[short stories & essays]
Ugly Daikon; personal essay; Canadian Notes & Queries; Number 92, Spring, 2015, Canada; 1 pp
Letter #26; personal essay; Canadian Notes & Queries; Number 86, Winter, 2012, Canada; 1 pp.
Long Ago in Tokyo; personal essay; Palooka; Issue #3, Spring, 2012, USA; 4 pp.
Guts; short story; Hayden’s Ferry Review; Issue #48, Spring/Summer 2011, USA; 2 pp.
A Japanese Ghost Story; short story; Descant; Issue #152 Spring 2011, Canada; 4 pp.
Superhero Cemetery; short story; The White Wall Review; Fall 2010, Canada; 5 pp.
Parachute Man; short story; Queen’s Feminist Review; #17 Spring 2009, Canada; 4 pp.
Ophelia (323), Scrub Your Eyes; short story; Bottom of the World; March 2009, United Kingdom; 3 pp.
Misery Guts; short story; Knock; #10, The Dead Friends Issue, Fall 2008, USA; 5 pp.
Death of a Dictator (My Iggly Education); short story; Event; 37.2, Fall 2008, Canada; 4 pp.
Roman Soldiers; personal essay; Filling Station; Issue 41, December 2007, Canada; 4 pp.
In the Kingdom of Chicken; short story; The Puritan; Issue 4, Fall 2007, Canada; 3 pp.
Polly Jean; short story; Windsor Review; Volume 40 No1, Spring 2007, Canada; 5 pp.
Dead Motorcycle Cops; short story; Kiss Machine; No.11, Fall/Winter 2005, Canada; 3 pp.
Victory Girl; short story; Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (anthology), Arsenal Pulp Press; Fall 2005, Canada; 6 pp.
The Prince (Sometimes You’re Dying); short story; The New Quarterly; No.94, Spring 2005, Canada; 5 pp.
Blindekuh; short story; Subterrain Magazine; Volume 4 No.39, Spring 2004, Canada; 4 pp.
Free Rein; short story; Prairie Fire; Volume 22 No.4, Winter 2001, Canada; 5 pp.
The Indisputable Weight of the Ocean; short story; Gaspereau Review; No.12, Summer 2000, Canada; 5 pp.
Living in a City; short story; Geist; Volume 8 No.33, 1999, Canada; 4 pp.
The Adam Box; short story; Whetstone, Volume 25 No.2, Winter 1999; Canada, 5 pp.
{ w e b }
+ "Thin" in The /tƐmz/ Review, Issue 18, Winter, 2022 +
+ “Rabbit’s Review Is Interrupted by an Airstrike” in Emrys Journal, 2019 +
+ "Spencer" in The Loose Canon Four +
+ "Toddler T-Shirt Slogans" in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, LISTS (8/17/06) +
+ "Beulah" in 55 Words +
+ "Dark All Day" in Branch Magazine, Issue 2.2 (Home, Part Two) +
+ "Bike Chain" in Knee-Jerk magazine, Issue #26, August 2011 +
+ "The Fire That Never Lights" in Illustration Friday, March 2012 +
[poetry]
“A Note for Sugarbones”; Pottersfield Portfolio, Volume 19 No.2, Spring 1999.
“The 7 of Cups”; The Fiddlehead, No.197, Autumn 1998.
{ o t h e r }
Shortlisted for the national ReLit Awards (2011) for my short-story collection Punishing Ugly Children.
Finalist for 2010 Malahat Review Novella Prize, for my illustrated novella Broken Hill.
Finalist in 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition for my story Scissors.
Winner of 2007 David Adams Richards Prize (best book-length manuscript, Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick) for my short-story collection Punishing Ugly Children.
[reviews]
Berger’s talent is fresh and volatile, his imagination often smartly channelled, other times rampant or simply meandering. The best work here proves him an ambitious and singular new voice, one that will only get better as craft distills impulse.
— The Globe and Mail
In his first short story collection Berger channels the whimsical imagination of a precocious child. Sentences are punchy and trip over each other in their pace, something he maybe learned growing up with six siblings in rural Saskatchewan. But the David Adams Richards Prize winner isn't just cute, his magic realism and unique narratives warrant study, many reads and a want for more.
— Telegraph-Journal
Anything could be happening, everything is occurring and it all seems to pour from his skillful and idiosyncratic hand.
— The Telegram
Darryl Joel Berger's debut short story collection is filled with distinctive characters, many pining for luck amidst bad situations and mile-long losing streaks. Whether his characters get what they want is ultimately less important than dramatizing the awkwardness of life in a disconnected world, a theme that resounds evocatively throughout the book.
— Quill & Quire
Darryl Joel Berger dreams up dark and troubled landscapes populated by deeply disturbed characters. In a matter of mere pages (or even paragraphs), entire twisted lifetimes are lived and worlds stutter to an end.
— Atlantic Books Today
Berger writes like an anarchist plotting mayhem, his stories routinely deviating from the norm, venturing into uncharted territory where they live or die on their own terms. At their best, the stories break with tradition in a manner that seems not only natural but inevitable, and the reader finishes them with his mind open to new possibilities. When Berger fails, it's often because he's stretching an already thin premise beyond the breaking point or too obviously trying to shock the reader into submission. But this does not diminish the triumph that Punishing Ugly Children represents. This book adheres from start to finish to its author's bracingly fresh and idiosyncratic vision. Adventurous readers will want to pick it up, if only for the thrill of getting in on the ground floor or something new and strange.
— The Fiddlehead
Berger’s exceptional collection of strange, artful short stories offers the kind of instant gratification readers are hungry for in a time-starved world. Every school kid’s fantasy comes vividly true in ‘An Arsonist’s Guide to Physics’ - in a miraculous two and a half pages. Berger’s economy is his genius: he gets to the heart faster than a gamma ray. In ‘Free Rein’, a history professor and his mistress gamble the last of the children’s savings bonds with mixed success. ‘Red Horse Leader’ reads like a micro novel. ‘The Kingdom of Chicken’ is a surprisingly poignant portrait of the single girl’s dilemma and ‘Big Head’ is the literary equivalent of an episode of The Office, complete with email exchanges which make the reader cringe and grin, often in the same sentence.
— Arts East
Each piece has a punchline, its own small and smartly delivered wound, though each arrives differently, some as a cherry bomb unexpectedly blowing off the reader’s fingers, others as a deftly driven scalpel slice.
– Natalie Zina Walschots on Dark All Day in Quill & Quire