SKIDS:
This is fiction that shines a unique light into our common darkness. Skids is filled
with brilliant, powerful, and compassionate voices. If ever I need a guide on the
dark side of the moon, I want it to be Cathleen With.
-Bill Gaston
Skids is a nervy and powerful tour de force, written with wit and honesty in an
entirely original voice. Unforgettable.
-Helen Humphreys
The author's voice is original, fresh, and authentic. With inhabits her characters
from the inside out, and presents them to us with a clear, unblinking gaze. These
stories feel lived rather than imagined.
-Quill & Quire
An impressive debut collection. . . . the stories are loosely linked by setting and
some characters, which helps to underscore the anarchic drift of lives in this
community of the dispossessed. We lose characters, then find them again, usually
no better off -- but more familiar, and more worth knowing. . . . "Drive Uncle Randy"
is a road story ripe for a film deal (think Gus Van Sant or David Lynch).
-The Globe and Mail
"Street illegal"
JIM BARTLEY, The Globe and Mail
Skids
By Cathleen With
-Arsenal Pulp
When we think of detox, we think of celebs breaking a pill or coke habit, or of an
ordinary drunk desperate to not lose wife and kids. In the first story of this impressive
debut collection, Cathleen With introduces a keener sense of waste… Read More
SKIDS Quill and Quire review
"Skids" is the slang term for street kids or runaways living in Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside. Many of them are native Canadians, many are HIV positive, and many are
addicted to heroin, crystal meth or alcohol. They are unwed teenage mothers or victims
of sexual abuse at the hands of family members or surrogate family members. They
turn tricks for drug money; they float in and out of detox and rehab clinics.
The dozen stories in Cathleen With's new collection focus squarely on the lives of
these marginalized urban denizens, sketching their existence in language that is a raw
and immediate, yet also infused with compassion and understanding. There is a marked
lack of sentimentality to these stories. The characters do not retreat into maudlin self-pity,
but instead cling desperately almost defiantly - to whatever rays of hope manage to shine
into their dark lives... Read More
Ottawa Xpress Review: Skids
Revealing the invisible
Lara Purvis
Cathleen With's Skids a raw glimpse of Vancouver's Eastside
Cathleen With is unafraid of truth. Words spill from her pen like blood from an open wound.
Skids is an irrepressible purging of stories needing to be told. But With carries a noble
intention - to pay homage to the voices that she grew to love, the voices of the homeless
and the disenfranchised in the heart of Vancouver's Eastside. Skids is published by
Vancouver's black sheep of the publishing industry, Arsenal Pulp Press… Read More
Rabble.ca
Brave new voice
Cathleen With’s debut story collection SKIDS excavates layers of pain and courage
in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
CATHLEEN WITH's debut story collection — SKIDS — has garnered excellent
reviews from across the country, bringing her tales of youth in Vancouver’s Downtown
Eastside, many of them runaways or addicts, to all Canadians… Read More
