P.W. Bridgman is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer of poetry, fiction and literary criticism who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The real person who has sheltered behind the Bridgman pen name since the mid-1980s is Thomas S. Woods. (It’s a long story.) Immediately before his retirement in September 2019, and under his true name, Bridgman (Woods) served professionally for 12 years within the justice system. For the 20 years that preceded that, he practised as a barrister at a large Vancouver law firm.
 
Bridgman began writing and publishing fiction and poetry under his pen name while an articled student-at-law. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in (among others) The Moth Magazine, The Honest Ulsterman, The Glasgow Review of Books, Poetry Salzburg Review, RIC Journal, Sad Mag, The Literary Lawyer, Culture Matters, The Galway Review, The Bangor Literary Journal, Litro UK, Litro NY, The High Window, Crossways Magazine, Reflex Fiction, Pif Magazine, Praxis Magazine, The Idler, Grain Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Ars Medica, Ascent Aspirations, Patchwork Paper, The New Orphic Review, London Grip, A New Ulster, Easy Street, Section 8 Magazine, Pottersfield Portfolio, The Mulberry Fork Review and Aerodrome.
 
Bridgman’s writing has won prizes and has been short- and long-listed in several literary competitions, both in Canada and overseas. Some of his short stories and flash fiction pieces are represented in anthologies published in Ireland, England, Scotland and Canada.
 
In 2018, Bridgman was one of nine participants selected to participate in the intensive writing summer school program offered by the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast – an experience that he says was a defining one in his writing life.
 
Bridgman has done many public readings of his creative work at literary venues in British Columbia and abroad (including at the United Arts Club in Dublin, the Tchai Ovna Teahouse in Glasgow, the Open Studio in Melbourne and, most recently, the Accidental Theatre in Belfast).
 
Bridgman’s first book of short fiction, entitled Standing at an Angle to My Age, was published in 2013 by the independent Canadian literary publisher, Libros Libertad Publishing Ltd. In September 2018 his first book of poems, entitled A Lamb, was published by the independent Canadian literary publisher, Ekstasis Editions. Second selections of Bridgman’s poems (Idiolect) is nearing completion, and short stories and flash fiction The Four-Faced Liar, was published in February 2021.
 
Some brief excerpts from reviews of Bridgman’s work are set out below.
 
A Lamb (Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2018)
 

Bridgman is a poet who not only understands ordinary people and sympathizes with them, but also sees the ordinariness and humanity of those whose misfortunes and mistakes have made them criminals. To gain some of the benefit of Bridgman’s long experience of human nature by reading A Lamb is an opportunity not to be missed.

 

Daniel Cowper, the Advocate, March 2020.

 
 

A wonderful, essential book that sings to our sorrows, cloaks our mysteries, celebrates the fierceness of our young love and the joy of appreciative love that survives and grows later in life.

 

John Swanson, The Pacific Rim Review of Books, Spring 2020.

 
 

[W]ide ranging in his subjects, catholic in his tastes, and with a sharp eye for the witty aside that makes one think of a darker, funnier version of the American master Billy Collins.

 

James W. Wood, The High Window, Winter 2019.

 
 

Herein are contained all the qualities that she valued in good writing – the visual thrill of language, the interplay of many voices (especially including those from the working class), and an ironic authorial perspective that renders the simple as something complex.

 

David Stouck, The Ormsby Review, March 2019.

 
 

In these relatively long poems Bridgman tells stories, sets scenes and develops ideas, often using quite plain language but most imaginatively put together in many varieties of free verse…

 

James Ovans, London Grip, March 2019.

 
 

Standing at an Angle to My Age (Vancouver: Libros Libertad, 2013)
 

P.W. Bridgman reveals himself as a strong new voice in Canadian literature. The stories in this collection cover vast ground; Bridgman takes the reader back and forth in time and across the Atlantic. From Ireland to Canada to Great Britain, from the present day to the Second World War, Bridgman renders each setting skilfully, both through physical detail and the nuances of each place and time’s characters and speech…

 

T. Gilboy, PRISM International, Spring 2013.

 
 

[L]anguage as taut as an Emily Dickinson poem … The stories in Standing at an Angle to My Age, while sometimes set abroad, are nonetheless markedly Canadian, some with specifically B.C. settings and references. They inhabit a wide range of genres and modes but are distinguished by the steady craft of an elegant literary stylist. Each piece is an experiment and P.W. Bridgman is a writer of exceptional talent…

 

David Stouck, BC Bookworld, November 2013.

 
 

The prose is spare, each word chosen with surgical precision. The enigmatic Bridgman knows how to craft a sentence … [I]n the space of a page and a half [one of the flash fiction pieces] gives an Alice Munro-like spark of insight capturing a tiny moment, giving a small ping of epiphany…

 

Roberta Rich, the Advocate, November 2013.