Brent Hayward

Brent Hayward is a Canadian author of speculative fiction whose work combines decaying systems, strange ecologies, and characters living far from conventional centers of power. ChiZine Publications released Filaria, his first novel, in 2008. Hayward had already published short fiction before making this his book-length debut. Its underground society contains thirty-two stratified levels linked by machinery that is beginning to fail. Four narrative threads follow inhabitants from different parts of that enclosed world, including a young man searching for someone missing, an exiled girl studying the past, an elderly elevator operator, and a fisherman seeking the cause of his wife's decline. Their stories remain distinct while revealing different consequences of the same breakdown. Filaria introduces Brent Hayward's interest in damaged artificial environments and moral uncertainty, using a layered subterranean colony to ask what happens when inherited structures no longer protect the people dependent on them.