Canadian / Irish film and television producer Jay Daniel Beechinor of The JDB Film Company has optioned the television/film rights to the Canadian #1 National Bestseller and Finalist for both Canada Reads and the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles.
February in Newfoundland is the longest month of the year. Another blizzard is threatening to tear a strip off downtown St. John’s, while inside The Hazel restaurant a storm system of sex, betrayal, addiction and hurt is breaking overhead. Iris, a young hostess from around the bay, is forced to pull a double despite resolving to avoid the charming chef and his wealthy restaurateur wife. Just tables over, Damian, a hungover and self-loathing server, is trying to navigate a potential punch-up with a pair of lit customers who remain oblivious to the rising temperature in the dining room. Meanwhile Olive, a young woman far from her northern home, watches it all unfurl from the fast and frozen street. Through rolling blackouts, we glimpse the truth behind the shroud of scathing lies and unrelenting abuse, and discover that resilience proves most enduring in the dead of this winter’s tale.
Megan has a unique voice and her characters are dynamic. It is
Jay Daniel Beechinor, Producer
beautifully written and will make a fantastic series unlike anything else on television.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club will be developed into a series, with the author attached as Executive Producer.
The novel was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2019 and for CBC’s Canada
Reads competition. It was published by House of Anansi Press.
The deal was negotiated by Samantha Haywood, president of literary management
company Transatlantic Agency.
Megan Gail Coles is a writer of plays, screenplays, poetry and prose originally from The Strait of Belle Isle on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland/Ktaqmkuk. Her books include Squawk, Satched, Eating Habits of the Chronically Lonesome and Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club. Her work has been a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller prize, a Canada Reads contender and has twice won the BMO Winterset award. Megan is the Artistic Director of Poverty Cove Theatre Company and Executive Director of Riddle Fence Publishing in St. John’s and a doctoral student at Concordia University.