For a writer who once professed If in the course of my life I can get half a dozen stories printed, I’ll be satisfied’, Flying a Red Kite (1962) marked the start of a very much more productive career. A new edition of that title, released by the Porcupine’s Quill in 1987, formed volume one of a proposed Collected Stories’. A Short Walk in the Rain (Volume Two) includes thirteen stories written between 1957 and 1961, which for one reason or another were left out of Red Kite, and which have never since been published. They include five of what the author delicately calls instructive artistic failures’, two interesting failed tries’ and half a dozen unpretentious successes’ which Hood would rank with anything in Flying a Red Kite. Hugh Hood was born in Toronto in 1928 and studied at the University of Toronto where he completed his Ph.D. in 1955. He was a university instructor or professor for forty years, mostly at the Universiti de Montrial. Hood published seventeen novels, nine story collections and four works of non-fiction. Twelve of his novels comprise the twelve-volume roman fleuve, The New Age/Le nouveau sihcle, begun in 1975 with The Swing in the Garden and completed with Near Water (2000) which was published a month after his death on 1 August 2000.