Ian Gillespie

‘Playing Possum’ unfolds masterfully. With well-calculated restraint Gillespie explores depths of emotional tension; the space and silence of unmentioned details sheds just as much light on the characters’ inner lives as the dialogues between them. The author weaves through themes of family relationships and dysfunction, mental illness, the mundane, and formative childhood experiences with striking imagery. This story and my curiosity about its characters and their futures has stayed with me long after reading.

Well! There’s a horror story, for sure! Ian Gillespie can write, and he’s delivered here a typewriter collector’s nightmare!… ‘It Won’t Go Away’ pulled me along in fascination at its weirdness…. The author uses delayed gratification of information to powerful effect. He also knows how to be subtle; he paints the unraveling of Neil’s relationships with real skill, showing us just the right amount.

— Frederic S. Durbin, award-winning author of The Country Under Heaven (2025)

His columns are easy-flowing, well-written and take a refreshingly stylish and creative approach to issues. He makes points with finesse and subtle humour without subverting the intent of the message. A mea culpa on a youthful reaction to a gay person was sensitively handled. Another column bravely advocated the muzzling of all dogs.

— Robert Hull, former publisher of the North Bay Nugget newspaper

In ‘It Won’t Go Away’ …. Gillespie invokes a visceral disgust familiar to anyone who has ever felt nauseated at the dead mass of very human remains which accumulate in a shower plughole. If the excess of its climax owes a little too much to the lurid melodrama of E.C. comics, the insidious understatement of the noisome suspense which proceeds it more than compensates for its minor misjudgement.

— Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent at Northern Soul webzine