AfterWords Literary Festival, November 1–8, 2026.
picture book · 2026
A child arrives at summer camp not knowing anyone, and a series of short scenes shows children's ideas about how friendships start, from asking questions to sharing interests and stories. It is the last book in the Who We Are trilogy, illustrated by Qin Leng, for ages 3 to 6.
picture book · 2025
How We Saved the Ojibwe Horse
Two children waiting for their Ojibwe horses hear their grandmother tell how the last four Lac La Croix ponies were taken across a frozen lake in 1977 to save them from a government plan to destroy them. Co-written with Heather M. O'Connor and illustrated by Natasha Donovan.
non-fiction (children's) · 2026
Part of Nimbus's Amazing Atlantic Canadians series, the book profiles more than 50 2SLGBTQIA+ people from the four Atlantic provinces, including activists, drag performers, artists and educators. It also covers community history and key terms, with illustrations by James Bentley.
picture book · 2026
Richard Wagamese's poem, illustrated by Pawis-Steckley, follows an Indigenous child who is unsure what makes them proud to be Canadian and finds an answer through their ancestors. It was one of the first releases from Swift Water Books, Tundra's Indigenous imprint, for ages 3 to 5.
non-fiction (children's) · 2026
Juvenile non-fiction about the 1873 wreck of the SS Atlantic off Nova Scotia, told through young passengers and crew such as John Hanley and Lillian Davidson. It follows the voyage from England to Canada and the Nova Scotians who rescued about 400 survivors, with photos and sidebars.
picture book · 2026
Ellis sees danger where others don't and worries about meeting new people and losing their puppy, Peanut. The picture book, illustrated by Nandita Ratan, shows how worrying can sometimes be put to good use.
picture book (French) · 2026
Un apprentissage au gré des marées
A painter and illustrator signs on as a helper aboard a lobster boat and learns the trade, from the demands of life at sea to what lobster fishers need to know. Written and illustrated by Roy, in French, for readers 8 and up.
picture book · 2026
A child whose parent has died builds a cardboard rocket in the backyard to fly up and reach them, with help from Dad. The picture book, illustrated by Jennica Lounsbury, looks at the different ways people grieve, for ages 4 to 8.
board book · 2026
A rhyming board-book lullaby about the bond between a mother and her child, imagining what the child will do as they grow. Smith wrote the song for her first child years before it became a book.
picture book (French) · 2025
Nounours and Zéphie spend a night outdoors, and while Zéphie sleeps the little bear follows a light into the forest and nearly gets lost. The story works as a first lesson in stars and finding one's way, illustrated by Johanna Lezziero for ages 4 to 8.
middle-grade novel · 2026
Maia, who grows giant moth wings when her emotions run high, starts middle school in a town of shapeshifters just as a mysterious illness spreads through the gardens. When adults blame the shapeshifter children, she and her friends use their abilities to heal the town's divisions. It is Thom's first middle-grade novel.
poetry · 2025
A long poem about trauma, survival and what comes after, mixing serious subject matter with humour. It draws on Bob Ross, a live camera feed of endangered red wolves and a private story that becomes public.
poetry · 2026
Poems for the People
An anthology edited by Sina Queyras that gathers more than a hundred contemporary takes on the occasional poem. The poems are written for celebrations, mournings and moments of upheaval, in styles ranging from formal lyric to visual and avant-garde work.
novel · 2026
A Novel
In 1967 a 23-year-old UCLA student loses his draft deferment and decides to leave for Canada. Driving a new Jaguar east with a supply of amphetamines, he stops to see his father, mother, brother and twin sister along the way. It is deWitt's sixth novel.
novel · 2022
Joan, a mixed-heritage English tutor adrift in Europe, moves from Budapest to Bratislava and befriends Milan, a Roma teenager, and Adriana, who has come to make peace with her late mother's memory. The three form something like a family, and the novel takes up mixed-race identity, systemic oppression and family reconciliation.
novel · 2026
After her attacker goes free, Sarah Munroe takes her own life in public, and her final message starts a movement called #FreeToo. The government responds by reclassifying all women as 'hystericals,' and her sister Kennedy has to work out how to live with grief, anger and Sarah's legacy.
poetry · 2026
Poems
Thomas's second poetry collection looks at her identity as a Mi'kmaw woman and family member, including relationships with her parents, illness, memory, residential school trauma and reconnecting with her siblings. It also addresses Pretendians, arts funding cuts and the range of Mi'kmaw experience.
novel · 2026
A Novel
In 1955, Aliet's mother dies giving birth beneath an old oak where Indigenous women have given birth for generations, and her grandmother, a midwife, raises her in midwifery and traditional medicine. Aliet turns away from that life as an adult, then returns to the family home after her grandmother's death and confronts a long-kept family secret. It is Peters's second novel.
non-fiction · 2026
Preserving Our Legacy
Co-written with Mary McCarthy, with photographs by Gary Weekes, the book traces Black settlement in New Brunswick back to more than forty Black families who arrived by ship in 1783. It combines historical documents, first-person stories, poetry and portraits, and accompanies a touring exhibition that opened at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
novel · 2026
A Novel
In 1946 Florence, a respected senior secretary, keeps her past hidden by dyeing her hair blond each month. Chapters set from 1908 show her Métis family's life in Saskatchewan, the racism they faced, and her decision to pass as white and start over in Regina, until a Métis labourer arrives in her town.
novel · 2025
Over a single spring day that ends in a death, the novel follows residents of a gentrifying city neighbourhood, among them a queer mother worried about her son, a former actress weighing the end of her marriage and a young construction worker renovating a house. It looks at class, privilege and friendship.
novel · 2025
Fidel, who can see the dead, witnesses his mother's and uncle's murders as a six-year-old in Dominica in the years after its 1978 independence. His ghostly visitors shape his coming of age as he travels to Nova Scotia and back to understand his family's history and his gift.
novel · 2026
Three ambitious punks in their twenties make art, dream of a better world and get into trouble. Ten years later, two of them reconnect and take stock of what became of their radical plans. It is Miller's first novel, set in the punk scene he grew up in.
non-fiction (essays) · 2026
A Love Letter to Afghanistan
Aram's first essay collection is about writing, exile and rebuilding community after losing a homeland. Essays cover displacement, ethnic discrimination and the fall of Kabul, alongside memory and friendship.
novel · 2026
A Novel
The sequel to Hench follows Anna, now the villain Auditor, who wrecks superheroes' lives by exposing their secrets. After a superhero's death is blamed on her boss Leviathan, she sets out to take down the government department that manages superheroes, which may have a new leader as skilled at manipulation as she is.
poetry · 2026
A book-length erasure poem made from South Africa's application to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention. Removing much of the legal language brings forward the experiences of Palestinians in Gaza and the stated intentions of Israeli officials.
novel · 2026
A Novel
Claire Talbot, publicist for a nearly bankrupt international aid charity, arranges for a famous actress to volunteer at one of its overseas orphanages, and the actress's adoption plans and donation seem to save it. Then a journalist uncovers a crime in the charity's operations, and the staff must face their part in the harm done. The satire moves between Toronto and the charity's compound in Central America.
memoir · 2026
Losing My Memory, Searching for Truth, & Confronting Complex Trauma
A memoir about a woman with a career and family who experiences dissociation: lost time, not recognizing her reflection, and commitments she does not remember making. Her search for missing memories leads her to an event from the 1980s while she deals with misogyny and gaps in the health care system.
novel · 2025
Burnet's second novel deals with intimate partner abuse. It won the 2026 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and a Goldie Award for general fiction, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
poetry · 2019
A poetry collection built as an A-to-Z compendium, using the alphabet-book form to find wonder in information overload. Subjects range from Brazil nuts and juggling to the zodiac.
memoir · 2020
Memoirs
Essays, poetry and narrative non-fiction that follow the author over two decades, from working-class New England to San Francisco's early-1990s queer punk scene and the New Mexico desert. The book looks at gender, masculinity and what it takes for a trans person to thrive rather than only survive.
non-fiction (essays) · 2025
Essays on Being a Neurodivergent Non-Binary Person
Personal essays in which Manley, who is neurodivergent and non-binary, writes about not fitting the gender binary. Topics include hockey culture, working for a men's website and going bald as a non-binary person.
novel · 2026
Fifteen-year-old Audie Malloy, growing up on an air force base near Ottawa in the 1960s, would rather read than play hockey, and is drawn to Gib, a new neighbour who seems to be a typical athlete. Their story plays out against Quebec separatism, Expo 67 and the military's purge of suspected gay personnel.
novel · 2026
A Novel
Robbie, a young Métis man, is pulled between helping his mother, who will not leave an abusive husband or a home in the path of wildfires, and finding his absent father, who is missing in the mountains. While climbing a glacier he begins to hear its voice and must decide whether it is a real connection to the land or a sign of the illness that affected his father.
novel · 2026
Ghosts in the Machine
The sequel to The Downloaded. As an asteroid nears Earth, an ex-convict and a starship crew upload their minds into cyberspace, where he meets his long-dead daughter and the astronauts encounter younger versions of themselves who threaten the last survivors of humanity.
poetry · 2025
Poems
Ghafoor's first collection takes its title from an economics term for the value of something with no market price. The poems ask what makes life valuable while mourning lost species and looking at complicity in the climate crisis.
non-fiction (essays) · 2026
An essay collection about boredom in its different forms and how it connects to striving, caregiving and worry about the state of the world.
short stories · 2026
And Other Fictions
A collection of metafictional stories about writers looking for connection and creative fulfilment. In the title story a writer collects old typewriters to feel closer to her late mother, a poet; other stories follow an aspiring romance writer in Vancouver and an editorial assistant possessed by a poet's ghost.
memoir · 2026
My Father, the War, and Me
A memoir about how his father's six weeks of camp imprisonment in 1945 shaped the family for the next eighty years. Diepeveen tries to understand his father's life as a survivor and immigrant.
novel · 2026
A Novel
Cleo and her best friend are pregnant at the same time, but Cleo's daughter is born with a severe brain injury and dies soon after. Grieving and jealous, Cleo takes a job at a funeral home, where people who understand loss help her start to open up.
poetry · 2026
A long poem built from the language of news, advertising, war, technology and pop culture. It looks at how online culture and capital shape inner life and asks how a person can tell themselves apart from their online avatar.
short stories · 2026
Linked stories about unlucky and offbeat people, including a former military policeman and a veterinarian arguing about Vietnam, a woman who hits a boy with her car, paramedics surrounded by death and an astronaut who falls in love on the moon.
poetry · 2026
Unrhymed contemporary sonnets, grouped in threes, written from the view of a middle-aged woman on modern dating, sex and misogyny. The poems are set alongside notes on minerals and medicinal plants and include collages.
non-fiction · 2021
Fascinating Stories of Excellence and Determination
Co-written with Penelope Jackson and illustrated by James Bentley, the book profiles more than 70 women from the four Atlantic provinces, past and present, who led change, built creative careers or excelled in science.
memoir · 2026
Five Siblings Tell of Their Father's Grief and His Struggle Back to Hope
A memoir told in the voices of Morrissey and her four surviving siblings as they try to look after their grieving father after their mother's death. When a move to Halifax goes badly for the Newfoundland outdoorsman, they bring him home again.
graphic memoir · 2026
A graphic memoir about growing up as an urban Indigenous youth as the world went digital. The title refers both to a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis and to an unstable home life, and the book uses comics and bus-shelter art to look at healing and Indigenous futurism.
non-fiction · 2023
A Dialogue in Three Movements
An experimental non-fiction book co-written by Ekwuyasi and Roger Mooking, structured as a conversation in three parts.
novel · 2022
Isaac, who grew up on the Manitoba prairies and moved to the East Coast, returns to his mostly Mennonite hometown after a death in the family. He is estranged from his pastor father, largely over his sexuality, and has lost the grandfather who cared for him. The debut novel won the 2023 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.
poetry · 2024
writing lichen
A poetry collection about lichen, published by Gaspereau Press.
poetry · 2026
A book-length poem in clustered, untitled sections that combines ecopoetry with pregnancy and early motherhood. It follows a mother facing postpartum isolation in a house by the ocean, with imagery of shorelines and wildlife.
Sara O’Leary, Darcy Whitecrow, Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail, Rebecca Rose, Meaghan Smith, Kai Cheng Thom, Réjean Roy, Caroline Bélisle, Florence Brunet, Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley, Anna Lazowski, Sal Sawler
Luisa Ensslin, Stephanie Coldwell, Daniel Park, K.R. Byggdin, francesca ekwuyasi, Sue Goyette
Anna Quon, Patrick deWitt, Laurie Brown
Feisal G. Mohamed, Jamaluddin Aram, Syed Adnan Hussain
Sharon Bala
Jaime Burnet, Feisal G. Mohamed, Michelle Hébert, Kate Cayley, Sharon Bala, Bart Vautour
Farah Ghafoor
Michelle Porter
Alex Manley
Leonard Diepeveen, Ruth Ozeki, Robert J. Sawyer, Erin Wunker
Mai Nguyen
Lindsay Bird, Carolyn Ray
Mark Anthony Jarman, Kaie Kellough, Jennifer LoveGrove, Sharon Bala, Ruth Ozeki
Sara O’Leary
Darcy Whitecrow
Rebecca Rose
Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley
Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail
Sal Sawler
Anna Lazowski
Sue Goyette
Daryl Bruce
Luke Hathaway
Sina Queyras
Patrick deWitt
Vivek Shraya
Amanda Peters
Thandiwe McCarthy
Tara Gereaux
Kate Cayley
Jamaluddin Aram
Natalie Zina Walschots
Sharon Bala
Jaime Burnet
Bart Vautour
Alex Manley
Stephens Gerard Malone
Michelle Porter
Robert J. Sawyer
Farah Ghafoor
Erin Wunker
Ruth Ozeki
Leonard Diepeveen
Mai Nguyen
Kaie Kellough
Jennifer LoveGrove
Stephanie Domet
Donna Morrissey
Zeta Paul
Clare Goulet
Jaime Forsythe