Darlene Madott is an award-winning writer who practised law in Toronto for more than 35 years. Author of a growing number of books, her 9th work of linked short stories, WINNERS AND LOSERS (Tales of Life, Law, Love and Loss) Guernica, spring, 2023, offers a front-row seat onto the field of battle. WINNERS AND LOSERS was named among the "10 best Canadian short story collections" by The Miramichi Reader, 2023. In 2021, EXILE published her 8th book, DYING TIMES, an experimental novel and fictional exploration of the last journey, to critical acclaim. DYING TIMES is currently shortlisted for a Bressani Literary Award and has just been published in Italian as Il carosello della morte, Les Flanneurs Edizioni, 2025. Her short fiction has been widely anthologised and has garnered literary awards, including the title story of her MAKING OLIVES AND OTHER FAMILY SECRETS (Ripasso), which won the Bressani Literary Award in 2008. That collection included "Touching Calabria," a winner in an Accenti Magazine competition. STATIONS OF THE HEART, a collection of linked short-stories, (Exile Editions, 2013) again won the Bressani Literary Award. That collection includes "Vivi's Florentine Scarf," winner of the Paolucci Prize of the Italian American Writers' Association, and "Waiting," short-listed for the Gloria Vanderbilt sponsored Carter V. Cooper Exile Competition 2011-12. She has been short-listed for the CVC three times -- for "Waiting" (An Almost Love Story), "Winners and Losers," and for "Newton's Law, a comedic exploration of escalating wars between separating spouses -- the latter two stories part of WINNERS AND LOSERS (Guernica, 2023), growing out of and inspired by her legal background. "Appropriation" was short-listed for the inaugural Nona MacDonald Heaslip "Best Canadian Short Fiction" award, 2023, and is forthcoming in CLOSING CEREMONIES (Tales of Abandonment, Betrayal, and Consequence), Guernica, Fall, 2026.
In May, 2025, Darlene was invited to speak on the plenary panel for the International Conference of the Short-Story in Killarney, Ireland, concerning Alice Munro.
I perform excerpts from DYING TIMES to live audiences, almost as a one-woman theatre performance, followed by Q. & A. One such performance was to the St. Lawrence Supper Club to an audience of then 75 persons.
I have also given talks on "The Art of Surrender" (for example, to the Law Society of Ontario) arising out of the Epilogue of WINNERS AND LOSERS, and to the University Womens Federation of Etobicoke, and talks concerning the grief and reconciliation.
