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Dear Friends,
We are excited and proud to introduce you to the phenomenal new additions to the Transatlantic roster. Also in this newsletter are some of the rave reviews we've received this past season.
Please contact us to learn more about any of the clients or books listed below. Not sure who to contact or have multiple requests? Try our new group email:
[email protected]
Marilyn Biderman,
Shaun Bradley,
Sandra Bishop,
Andrea Cascardi,
Brenna English-Loeb,
Rob Firing,
Carolyn Forde,
Samantha Haywood,
Stephanie Sinclair,
Tim Travaglini,
Amy Tompkins, and
Léonicka Valcius
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Roxanne Dubé
In March, 2015, only a few months after her arrival in Miami to take on the position of Consul General in Florida, Ms Dubé lost a son in a drug deal gone wrong, and had to step down from her duties. She then fought for the release of her other son, who was charged with felony murder as an accomplice to the crime. Ms, Dubé's memoir, ANOTHER LAW: Loss, Struggle and a Mother's Search for Meaning is currently on submission to publishers in French and in English.
Ms Dubé is the Dean of the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, the body that provides training for members of Canada's diplomatic service. She has extensive experience over many years with the Department of Global Affairs and as an Ambassador (Zimbabwe). Ms Dubé has held many senior positions in the federal public service regarding Canada's embassies and missions throughout the world. She also worked as Director, Cabinet and Parliamentary Affairs for Lloyd Axworthy, when he held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Ms Dubé holds a Master's Degree in Political Science from the University of Ottawa.
Roxanne Dubé is represented by Marilyn Biderman, [email protected] and at the Transatlantic Speakers' Agency, by Rob Firing, [email protected].
 Lori Fox
Lori Fox is a queer writer and journalist whose work aims to look at the world as it is, not as we would prefer it to be. Their essays, reporting and fiction have appeared in
Vice
,
The Guardian
,
The Globe and Mail
,
This Magazine
and
Grain
, and focus on environmental, class and gender issues. They live in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, where they can often be found at the lakeside with a book, a fishing rod, and their faithful dog, Herman.
 Amy M. Hale
Amy M. Hale is an award winning essayist, novelist, slam poet, and frequent featured artist at the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. She lives and cowboys on the 50,000 acre Spider Ranch in Yavapai County, Arizona.
Her first essay collection RIGHTFUL PLACE (Texas Tech University Press) won a Willa Award, one for which her subsequent novel, THE STORY IS THE THING was also shortlisted. Hale's most recent essay collection ORDINARY SKIN is an exceptional revelation of mastery of metaphor and visceral lusty prose, inviting readers to press, skin-to-skin, into a place between our inhabited identity and true place in the world.
Hale's newest creative non-fiction manuscript DRINKING WILD WATER is an immersive and lyrical accounting of her progression from a born-again, casserole toting, home-schooling Texas wife & mom to a pantheistic, butt-in-the-saddle, range rider who cowboys alongside men twice her size in the high country of Arizona. The manuscript will be available for consideration in October.
Amy is represented by Sandra Bishop, [email protected].
 Liz Harmer
Liz Harmer was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, but now lives with her philosopher husband and three children in Southern California. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, PRISM, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. In 2014 she won gold in Personal Journalism at the National Magazine awards, after being awarded the Constance Rooke Award for Creative Nonfiction. In 2018 she was a finalist for the Journey Prize as well as appearing in Best Canadian Stories. Her debut novel, THE AMATEURS, released in 2018 with Knopf Canada, was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. She is at work on her next novel. Liz is represented by Samantha Haywood, [email protected].
 Alix Hawley
Alix Hawley studied English Literature and Creative Writing at Oxford University, the University of East Anglia, and the University of British Columbia. Her first book, a story collection titled THE OLD FAMILIAR (Thistledown Press), was longlisted for the ReLit award. Her first novel, ALL TRUE NOT A LIE IN IT, published by Knopf as its New Face of Fiction pick for 2015, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won both the Amazon.ca / Walrus First Novel Award and the BC Book Prize for Fiction. Her most recent book is MY NAME IS A KNIFE, one of Esi Edugyan's picks for 2018. Alix lives in British Columbia and has two more novels underway. Alix is represented by Samantha Haywood, [email protected].
 Kate Hilton
Kate Hilton is the bestselling author of THE HOLE IN THE MIDDLE and JUST LIKE FAMILY. Her forthcoming novel in Canada, BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME
(World Rights ex: Canada available)
is a brilliant generational family comedy for fans of Eligible (Curtis Sittenfeld), This Is Where I Leave You (Jonathan Tropper), and television's This Is Us. Kate's non-fiction writing has appeared in The National Post, Canadian Living, and The Huffington Post, on topics ranging from working motherhood to creativity to reinvention. She lives in a blended family - including a husband, two sons, a stepdaughter, and a rescue dog - in Toronto. Kate is also at work on a fabulous and hilarious nonfiction book with writing partner Liz Renzetti called PEAR SHAPED: How to Survive Midlife When it's All Going South (proposal now available). Kate is represented by Samantha Haywood, [email protected].
 Chase Joynt
Chase Joynt is a moving-image artist and writer whose films have won jury and audience awards internationally. His latest short film, Framing Agnes, premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, won the Audience Award at Outfest in Los Angeles, and is being developed into a feature film with support from Telefilm Canada's Talent to Watch program. Concurrently, Chase is in production on a feature-length hybrid documentary about jazz musician Billy Tipton, co-directed with Aisling Chin-Yee. Joynt's first book YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (co-authored with Mike Hoolboom) was a 2017 Lambda Literary Award Finalist and named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail and CBC. He is at work on new narrative nonfiction book, EVERY DIFFERENCE IS A LIKENESS which rethinks the relationship between media, violence and masculinity and a newly discovered knowledge of a familial relation Marshall McLuhan.
 Arno Kopecky
Arno Kopecky is an environmental journalist and the author of two books of literary non-fiction:
THE DEVIL'S CURVE
(Douglas & McIntyre, 2012) and
THE OIL MAN AND THE SEA
(Douglas & McIntyre, 2013); a finalist for the 2014 Governor General's Award; and winner of the 2014 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. Arno's dispatches on ecology, culture, and globalization have taken him across five continents to over twenty countries. A regular contributor to
The Walrus
and
The Globe And Mail
, he also writes for
Reader's Digest
,
The Tyee
,
Alberta Views
, OpenCanada.org,
The Narwhal
, and other publications.
Arno is currently at work on
THE ENVIRONMENTALIST'S PARADOX
, an essay collection examining how life can be so good for so many in a world on the brink of collapse.
 Sonnet L'Abbé
Sonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet, editor and professor. They are the author of A STRANGE RELIEF and KILLARNOE. In their third book, SONNET'S SHAKESPEARE (McClelland & Stewart, August 2019) they overwrite all of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. Quill and Quire called it "one of the most audacious volumes of poetry to appear in this country." In 2014, they edited the annual Best Canadian Poetry anthology.
Sonnet's accolades include the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award in 2000 and
the 2017 bp Nichol chapbook award for t
heir chapbook,
ANIMA CANADENSIS
. They teach creative writing and English at Vancouver Island University, and do editorial work for Brick Books and
The Malahat Review
. Sonnet is represented by Léonicka Valcius,
[email protected]
and Stephanie Sinclair,
[email protected]
.
 Minelle Mahtani
Minelle Mahtani is Associate Professor, Department of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia. She is the author of "Mixed Race Amnesia" and one of the editors of "Global Mixed Race." She is the former host of "Sense of Place" at Roundhouse Radio, 98.3 Vancouver. The show won several awards, including a Canadian Ethnic Media Association award and a British Columbia Association of Broadcasters award. She is a Muslim woman of South-Asian and Iranian descent. Minelle is also a former national television news journalist at the CBC.
Minelle is represented by Stephanie Sinclair, [email protected].
 Charmaine Nelson
Charmaine Nelson is an accomplished scholar, writer, public intellectual, and professor of art history at McGill University. In JOE THE PRESSMAN: How an African-Born Man Refused a Life of Slavery, Charmaine Nelson tells the truly extraordinary story of an exceptional man, who was born in Africa and survived the transatlantic crossing, only to be sold into slavery in British North America in 1768. William Brown, the owner of the newspaper in Quebec City, needed slave labour for his shop, and turned for a solution to his friend and mentor, William Dunlap, the postmaster general of Philadelphia. Brown requested an American-born "Negro boy," but the African-born Joe soon arrived. A veritable prisoner in Brown's print shop, Joe's work on the newspaper required his fluency in both French and English, unlike most slaves for whom literacy was illegal. Joe would exploit this knowledge and the in
formation gained from the social hub of the print shop to plan his many escapes. Evidence
of those escapes appears in a fascinating series of fugitive slave advertisements, making Joe one of the most resistant enslaved people ever documented in the Americas, and Nelson uses them to bring Joe vividly t
o life. Charmaine is represented by Marilyn Biderman, [email protected].
 Elizabeth Renzetti
Elizabeth Renzetti is a bestselling Canadian-British author and journalist. Her popular column runs weekly in Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, where she is also a feature writer. Her latest book, a collection of essays about contemporary feminism called SHREWED: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls, became a national bestseller upon its release in 2018. Her first novel, BASED ON A TRUE STORY, was also a bestseller and was shortlisted for the 2014 Kobo Emerging Writer Award. Elizabeth is also working with co-author Kate Hilton on a fabulous and hilarious nonfiction book, PEAR SHAPED: How to Survive Midlife When it's All Going South (proposal now available). Elizabeth has lived and worked as a journalist in Toronto, London, Los Angeles and Berlin. She is the mother of two teenagers and one cat, none of whom obey her, and she makes a risotto that is not quite as good as her nonna's. Elizabeth is represented by Samantha Haywood, [email protected].
 Amy Spurway
Welcome, Amy Spurway, whose debut novel CROW was published by Goose Lane Editions this spring, and has already attracted loads of enthusiastic critical attention, as well as some spectacular endorsements.
Amy is represented by Marilyn Biderman, [email protected].
"This darkly funny novel's language is outrageous and irreverent. It spits and crackles like a barn on fire...Spurway's writing has the deftness of someone juggling hot coals without getting burned."
-Cecily Ross,
The Literary Review of C
anada
"Amy Spurway catches perfectly the enigma that is Cape Breton Island. Her cast of divine lunatics, pogey-scammers, gossips, and big-hearted rebels, revealed through Spurway's lively and lucid prose, p
roves that Cape Breton is still the thought control centre of Canada."
-Wayne Grady, author of Up from Freedo
m and Emancipation Day
"Crow delighted me and amazed me the f
urther I read, with its freshness, its daring, its refusal to conform (and the project
ile vomiting)." -Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This
"Crow is ribald, blunt, accessible, and immediately likeable, tumours and all...You know how people say, 'You'll laugh, you'll cry'? You will. And you will." -
Quill & Quire
 Andrew F. Sullivan
Andrew F. Sullivan is from Oshawa, Ontario. He is the author of the novel
WASTE
(Dzanc Books), named a Best Book of the Year by
The Globe & Mail
,
The Walrus
and
CBC Books
in 2016. His short story collection
ALL WE WANT IS EVERYTHING
(ARP Books) was shortlisted for the ReLit Award for Short Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by
The Globe & Mail
in 2013. Sullivan's fiction has been repeatedly shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards and his work has appeared in
Hazlitt
,
The Globe & Mail
,
The New Quarterly
, and other publications. Sullivan now lives in Toronto, where he works for an urban planning and design firm.
Andrew is represented by Stephanie Sinclair, [email protected].
 Amanda Thebe
Amanda Thebe is a force of nature for women who are experiencing menopause hell and want to start feeling healthy and fit in their 40s and beyond. With over 20 years experience in the fitness industry, she is highly regarded expert on women's fitness and health. A popular guest on podcasts and online summits, Amanda brings a refreshing humor and no-nonsense approach to subjects usually shrouded in shame. Through her very frank articles, hilarious social media posts and inspirational and entertaining talks, she has continually inspires the loyal readers of her website FitnChips.com. Her exercise workouts and fitness tips have been featured in Shape, CBC, Chatelaine, Prevention, Healthline, Global News Canada, Lifehacker, Breaking Muscle, Girls Gone Strong and Ultimate Sandbag Training. Her adoring fans and clients have called her a 'resilient bitch' and 'an unstoppable inspiration', with one woman naming her "the over 40 guru to watch." She has recently completed a fabulously fun and accessible prescriptive nonfiction book called MENOPAUSING SO HARD (manuscript now available). Amanda is represented by Samantha Haywood, [email protected].
 Kai Cheng Thom
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performer, lasagna lover, and wicked witch. Her work includes FROM THE STARS IN THE SKY TO THE FISH IN THE SEA, a children's picture book; FIERCE FEMMES AND NOTORIOUS LIARS: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir, a novel; a place called No Homeland, a book of poetry; and I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World, a forthcoming collection of essays and poetry.
Kai is a rising star whose writing continues to garner accolades. She won the 2017 Dayne Ogil
vie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ Writers and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Prize both in 2016 for Transgender Fiction and in 2017 for Transgender Poetry. In 2019, actress Emma Wat
son chose FIERCE FEMMES as the March/April pick for the international feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf. Kai is working on her next novel, THE WOMAN WHO LIVED BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
.
Ka
i is represented by Léonicka Valcius, [email protected] and Marilyn Biderman, [email protected].
 Shannon Webb-Campbell
Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed Indigenous (Mi'kmaq) settler poet, writer, and critic. Her books include
STILL NO WORD (Breakwater 2015), the recipient of Eagle Canada's Out in Print Award, and
I AM A BODY OF LAND (Book*hug 2019). Shannon holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, an MA in English Literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick in the Department of English. She is the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine.
Shannon is represented by Stephanie Sinclair, [email protected]. Photo credit: Dayna Danger.
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Rave Reviews
 Praise for THE WAKE: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami by Linden MacIntyre (World rights: HarperCollins Canada, Aug 27, 2019; Film/TV rights: John Walker Productions). Contact: Shaun Bradley, [email protected]:
National Bestseller
-
The Globe and Mail
and
Toronto Star
40 Works of Canadian Nonfiction to Watch for Fall
-
CBC Books
52 Reads to Watch for This Season
-The Globe and Mail
"MacIntyre is a superb writer, and his book's two major set pieces, descriptions of the tsunami's arrival and the Rescue - an astonishing
Come From Away prequel - have moments of heart-stopping narrative. Yet it's the subtle, nuanced intertwining of family and larger story that gives
The Wake its power."
-Brian Bethune,
Maclean's
"Fascinating, infuriating, eloquent and cautionary"
-Post Media
"MacIntyre is a great storyteller, and this tale of neglect and death is among his best. A major work by one of Canada's great writers."
-
Owen Sound Sun Times
 Praise for JUST PERVS by Jess Taylor (World Rights Available Ex: English-language in Canada, Book*hug, Sept 2019). Contact: Marilyn Biderman, [email protected]:
One of the 35 books to look forward to reading -Toronto Star
Fall Book Preview 2019: Short Fiction and Anthologies
-
Quill and Quire
"Elegantly written and cleverly executed, all aimed at capturing the human condition and the often surprising content of our secret lives."
-Sarah Murdoch,
Toronto Star
"
Just Pervs imagines a world in which women's sexual desire isn't disgraceful; it's communicated, expressed, fulfilled, and accepted."
-Jessica Rose,
rabble.ca
"Taylor's prose is beautiful and cutting... These stories are cruel and unflinching about everything: characters, events, even the recurring Toronto scenery. Taylor touches on some really lucid relationship dynamics - particularly the grittier, more regrettable short-term kind."
-
Jackie Mlotek, Quill and Quire
 Praise for SEASON OF FURY AND WONDER by Sharon Butala (Coteau Books, May 2019) recently shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Contact: Marilyn Biderman, [email protected]:
"This fearless collection of short stories addresses head-on the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of aging women. The protagonists in these stories do not just rage against the dying of the light; they grab it by the throat, forcing the reader to confront uncomfortable and revelatory truth concerning what it is to age in a female body. Inspired by canonical stories such as John Cheever's 'The Swimmer,' James Joyce's 'The Dead,' and Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery,' Butala reinvigorates aging myths and the writing craft itself.
Season of Fury and Wonder
is poetic, flawless, and unflinching."
-Jury Citation, Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize
 Praise for I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE by Kai Cheng Thom (World Rights: Arsenal Pulp Press, Sept 2019). Contact: Léonicka Valcius, [email protected] and Marilyn Biderman, [email protected]:
"This enlightened essay collection is both an invocation of and invitation to love - with intention - as a way to repair, rebuild and reimagine new worlds. I hope readers will choose to take up Kai Cheng Thom's fiery call to arms."
-Vivek Shraya, author of
I'm Afraid of Men
and
even this page is white
"Many writers talk about wanting to change the world or open eyes with their work, but it takes a special writer to actually do that. Kai Cheng Thom is that writer. With I Hope We Choose Love, Thom utilizes her seemingly bottomless empathy and mesmerizing intellect to both examine and excavate the ways we deal with trauma, abuse, activism, transphobia, and racism. This book will both change the way you look at our damaged world and inspire you to imagine new ways to nurse that world back to health. We are so damn lucky to have this book, to have Kai Cheng Thom." -Alicia Elliott, author of
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
"In this brave and skillfully written collection of essays, Kai Cheng Thom dares to be really honest - to write truths that go beyond easy orthodoxy to her and our own messy, complex, real stories. As a suicide survivor and someone who does work around suicide in queer and femme communities, I deeply appreciate her clarity about how suicide shows up in queer and trans communities and the ways in which social justice, queer, trans and/or Black and brown communities turn on and hurt each other while trying to keep ourselves safe. This is a brave book, and an essential text for everyone trying like hell to create something that will come after the end of the world. Read it, and prepare to have your mind challenged and opened."
-Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
 Praise for SONNET'S SHAKESPEARE by Sonnet L'Abbé (World Rights Available Ex: Canada, McClelland & Stewart, August 2019). Contact Léonicka Valcius, [email protected] and Stephanie Sinclair, [email protected]:
"...the sonnets have now given impetus to L'Abbé's third collection, one of the most audacious volumes of poetry to appear in this country in quite some time. Sonnet's Shakespeare (McClelland & Stewart) does not simply represent a clever inversion of the Bard's title, playing on L'Abbé's own uncommon name. It comprises 154 individual poems, each of which contains embedded within it one of Shakespeare's sonnets. All the letters of each sonnet appear, in their original order, hidden among L'Abbé's own words... on a metaphorical level, the entire project questions Shakespeare's traditional centrality in the Western canon, interrogating the extent to which other, more marginalized voices have been silenced to carve out space for a dead white male voice that is frequently deemed universal."
-
Quill and Quire
, September 2019
"To embody an experience, to retell histories, to open doors and windows--Sonnet L'Abbé's
Sonnet's Shakespeare
is the key. Whether you are versed in Shakespeare or not, you will be mesmerized by L'Abbé's beautifully choreographed dance through a city's secrets. She offers movements we've not seen before. I want to thank L'Abbé for allowing readers to reside in the space where erasure meets found poem. L'Abbé is a form-bending master."
-Chelene Knight, author of
Dear Current Occupant
"Sonnet L'Abbé's writing in
Sonnet's Shakespeare
is simply stunning. L'Abbé's conceptual engagement with colonial history urges us to consider how deeply internalized and invisible colonial structures can be while also being both an incredibly funny and dazzlingly inventive book. This is brilliant work!"
-Jordan Abel, author of Injun
 Praise for POLAR VORTEX by
Shani Mootoo (World Rights Available Ex: English Canada, Book*hug, Spring 2020; World English ex. Canada, Akashic Books). Contact Samantha Haywood, [email protected]:
"How to know the shifting pieces of ourselves, how to acknowledge contradictory desires, as we are pulled into the maelstrom of desire and memory? Shani Mootoo's intimate new novel suspends us in the vortex between acts of betrayal and acts of love. It is a powerfully unsettling work from a brilliant artist."
-Madeline Thien
"The past isn't even past-and the present is tense with conflicting desires and untold stories. What brings clarity to this setting is Shani Mootoo's limpid prose, clean and bracing. Polar Vortex is an honest, but also moving, exploration of true intimacy."
-Amitava Kumar, author of
Immigrant, Montana
 Praise for THE LAST RESORT by
Marissa Stapley (World Rights Available Ex: US, Graydon House, June 18, 2019; Canada, S&S, June 4, 2019; Germany, Rowohlt, 2019; ANZ, Allen & Unwin; English Canada Audio, Audible; Israel, Korim Publishing House; TV rights optioned by CBS/Jerry Bruckheimer). Contact Samantha Haywood, [email protected]:
"Fans of Reconstructing Amelia and Big Little Lies, will want to read this book as soon as possible...This fun read was exciting and kept me on my toes, as I tried to figure out who did it." -Sasee
"
The Last Resort marks a shift for the Toronto author. The novel is still focused on the delicate tight-wire balance required of long-time relationships, but the story's emotional core is wrapped in a taut thriller that opens on the first page with, yes, a murder."
-Toronto Star
 Praise for OPEN HOUSE: A Life in 32 Moves by
Jane Christmas (World Rights Available Ex: Canada, HarperCollins, Spring 2020). Contact Samantha Haywood, [email protected]:
"This is a book for everyone who loves houses: an insightful, rollicking read full of plaster dust and screaming seagulls where 'reno-mania' attacks the wobbly foundations of childhood - and triumphs!"
-Plum Johnson, author of
They Left Us Everything
 Praise for THE DEAD CELEBRITIES CLUB by
Susan Swan (World Rights Available Ex: English Canada, Cormorant Books, May 4, 2019; Italian, SEM). Contact Samantha Haywood, [email protected]:
"Topicality is a perilous quality for any novel, since, handled poorly, it can render the text didactic or gimmicky, little more than a fictionalized op-ed. Swan skirts these perils by acknowledging her plot's topicality and probing its narrative effects. She accomplishes this feat by embedding within her story a rabid media pack whose recognition of Dale Paul's newsworthiness reshapes our perception of him. Reporters swarm at the slightest opportunity. The media's presence lends the novel another layer of narrative consciousness. Lingering on the fringes like a chorus, it reminds us of an international public eager to consume stories about Dale Paul, an entity that upends our reading experience. We read his thoughts and actions, even as we imagine how they might be sensationalized in a tabloid story." -Literary Review of Canada
 Praise for THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE by Adnan Khan (World Rights Available Ex: World English, Arsenal Pulp Press). Contact Stephanie Sinclair, [email protected]:
"There Has to Be a Knife is an entertaining page-turner, at once a thriller and an intersectional, transgressive work of fiction that makes no comprises in its alternating nihilism and tenderness." -Quill and Quire, September 2019
"A raw, gritty, shiver-inducing--but very readable--account of a young man in a spiral of grief and self-destruction."
-Kirkus Reviews
"A searing meditation on isolation and grief in the modern world. There Has To Be A Knife is a striking debut." -Iain Reid, author of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Foe, and others
"Adnan Khan is a writer whose words and story,
There Has to be a Knife, carry heft. His voice is the one that many of us have been waiting for; we have suspected that such talent exists in this country-new, fresh and weighty.
There Has to be a Knife is a must-read."
-Lee Maracle, author of Ravensong, My Conversations with Canadians
, and others
"Like a sort of Notes from Underground for the hip-hop generation, Adnan Khan's darkly funny, compulsively readable and deceptively moving first novel stares headlong into the struggles of its young characters and the harm they cause to others and themselves. In raw, street-wise vernacular There Has to be a Knife offers an acute study of masculinity, how unexpressed grief snarls through anomie into resentment and rage, and the social scripts that exist for all of us-how we play our parts, and how we might also write our way into new stories." -Pasha Malla, author of Fugue States, The Withdrawal Method and others
"No one sleeps in Adnan Khan's propulsive novel of sex, Reddit, and precarity that brilliantly blends a critique of Canadian 'tolerance' with a raunchy paean to first love."
-Tamara Faith Berger, author of
Queen Solomon
,
Lie With Me
, and others
"This is a book that's alive, moving through the streets of Toronto, wiping sweat off of its electric body that hopes for resolution, that doesn't sleep, that presses against women's bodies, that longs for some kind of peace that never comes. Adnan Khan's poetic, sexy, and raw There Has to Be a Knife showcases one of the most intense and original new works on the CanLit scene. I read it over two sleepless nights, which is how it demands to be read--without stopping, your body too buzzing from exhaustion, your mind buzzing from the excitement of discovering a new, brilliant, and bold literary voice." -Jowita Bydlowska, author of Drunk Mom and Guy
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