About
the Book:
Winner of the 2009 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
"The cops wanted to shoot me,
my bosses thought I was a Bolshevik, and a local lawyer warned me
that some people I was writing about might try to test the strength
of my skull with a steel pipe. What more could any young reporter
hope for from his first real job?"
Never Shoot a Stampede Queen is a collection of true-life
tall tales about a rookie reporter's adventures in Canada's
still-very-wild West.
The night Mark Leiren-Young drove into Williams Lake,
British Columbia, in 1985 to work as a reporter for the Williams Lake Tribune, he arrived on the scene of an armed
robbery. And that was before things got weird.
For a 22-year-old from Vancouver, a stint in the legendary Cariboo
town was a trip to another world and another era.
From the explosive opening, where Mark Leiren-Young finds
himself in a courtroom just a few feet away from a defendant with a
bomb strapped to his chest, to the case of a plane that crashed
without its pilot on board, Never Shoot a Stampede Queen
(which takes its name from a kerfuffle that erupted over photos he
took of a rodeo queen contest) is an unforgettable comic memoir of a
city boy learning about and learning to love life in a cowboy town.
Not only does Mark Leiren-Young recount his encounters with
the police, loggers, the fire department, fellow workers and yes –
beauty contest aspirants for the local rodeo – but he tells his
story with both humour and compassion. As you will find out, it is a
wonderfully amusing story.
What people say:
"Mark Leiren-Young
is the funniest writer you've never heard from. Never
Shoot A Stampede Queen is a terrific debut; funny,
moving and profound. You will laugh out loud." — Will
Ferguson
"Mark Leiren-Young
has earned an enviable reputation as a Canadian comic and
storyteller, but here he expands his literary horizon. His portrait
of small-town BC is a mixture of Leacock (the wry humour and
evocative literary style) and Freud (psychoanalyzing the rural
psyches of his cast of kooky character). It's a must-read, and fun
too." — Peter C. Newman, author
"Never Shoot a Stampede
Queen… the most fun I've had this year… Mark
Leiren-Young is a natural storyteller, a peer of writers
like Stephen Leacock, W.O. Mitchell, Jack Douglas and W.P. Kinsella:
quietly hilarious, effortlessly moving, and always surprising. Like
them, he makes it look easy." — Spider Robinson,
author
"If you are a young
journalist you should read this book. If you're an old journalist,
you should read it. If you're a young rodeo queen, or an old rodeo
queen or any member of any kind of royalty at all, you should read
it. Heck, if you can read and you are mostly alive, you should read
this book. We did, and we are better for it." — Bob
Robertson and Linda Cullen, a.k.a. Double Exposure
"Mark Leiren-Young
is the funniest guy I know… Watching him perform, I think I'm too
old to giggle, but giggle I do… The first sentence of each tale
grabs my attention and holds on tight. Ninety or so lines later —
three or four pages (I have counted them!) – he leaves me smiling
and anxious to begin yet another of his improbable tales about the
life of 'a reporter in the boonies'. The Cariboo has never looked so…
dangerous! If Never Shoot a Stampede Queen is not short-listed for
the Leacock Medal for Humour, the ashes of old Stephen should turn
over in his urn." — John Robert Colombo, author
and anthologist
About the Author:
Mark Leiren-Young is a Canadian author, screenwriter,
playwright, satirist, performer, and environmentalist. After
graduating receiving his BFA in Creative Writing and Theatre at the
University of Victoria, he was hired as a reporter at the venerable
Williams Lake Tribune (a stint that inspired his first book,
Never Shoot a Stampede Queen). Since then he has been a
full-time freelance writer working in a variety of mediums and
genres. His plays have been produced throughout Canada and the US as
well as in Europe and Australia. He has written over a hundred hours
of television for shows including adult dramas like Psi Factor
and The Collector.