Writer
Tom’s work has been published in magazines throughout the U.S. and Canada, including Grain, The Dalhousie Review and New West Review. His collection of short stories, Blind Man’s Drum, was a finalist for Saskatchewan Book Awards, and his short story, Wars and Rumours of War, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Humour.
Tom’s new novel - The Boy Who Was Saved By Jazz has been picked up by NeWest Press for publication at the end of 2023. Tom has received three commissions to write for the theatre, including Friends, a play published by Red Deer Press, and an adaptation of The Iliad, which toured Spain. He has been produced by Canadian Broadcasting Company, written the foreword to sixteen publications of new plays, and penned lyrics for plays produced in Barcelona and Canada.
Tom's fiction featured in Fall 2018 issue of Grain Magazine!
Praise for 'Blind Man's Drum' (Thistledown Press, 2002)
"An absolute delight. Bentley transforms the inner monologues of family guilt and grudge and bafflement into darkly comic arias of the unspoken, punctuated with the chronic discords of what should never have been said. The best moments here are as good as writing gets."
- Toronto Globe and Mail
"The best satirical look at what Canada once was since Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Slamll Town. Blind Man's Drum warms the cockles of the reader with the assurance that there remains a place in the population of Canadian small towns for the backward and the quirky."
- The Danforth Review, Toronto
"Told with a soft, kindhearted voice, Bentley creates characters that not only leap off the page, but sit down next to you to read over your shoulder, chortling at their own exploits. Bentley presents his characters as the landscape, the readers exploring their surroundings through the senses of their narrative drives."
- The Ultimate Hallucination
"Hilarious. Irreverent. Speaks to the perversity in us all. Bentley, a man of seemingly infinite creative talents, has found his niche. A fine launch to a writing career."
- Saskatoon Star Phoenix
"These linked stories hum with a kind of raw energy. Bentley is adept at both subtle and grandly comic character sketches."
- Thomas Wharton, Saskatchewan Book Awards