The Next Big storytellers

Powerful, perceptive prose? Canadians are raised on it (special shout-out to Robert Munsch’s Thomas’ Snowsuit). Our nation has a well-loved roster of literary superstars—and a fresh crop of talent poised to take on the mantle of greatness.

Here are our picks to inherit the crowns of some current CanLit giants.

If you Farley Mowat... read

The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens. It would be an utter waste of our magnificent landscape if Canadian authors like Lansens weren’t carrying on the tradition of wilderness lit. Thankfully, Lansens’ survival tale of four people stranded alone on a mountainside is as terrifying and gripping as it is an homage to the fearsomeness of the natural world.

If you Joseph Boyden...read

Higher Ed by Tessa McWatt. Canadian authors excel at “human dramas as a microcosm for reflecting universal truths,” especially when they are paired with achingly lovely writing. McWatt’s tangled tale of five flawed, frustrating people is more of the (amazing) same and so vividly written that you’ll miss hanging out with her characters well after you’ve finished the book.

If you L. M. Montgomery... read

Nothing Like Love by Sabrina Ramnanan.

Great Canadian literature doesn’t have to be all dysfunctional families and barren prairie abysses. This warm, funny novel, set in Trinidad, is a story of an 18-year-old girl’s mission to do everything she can to win back the boy of her dreams... and discover a destiny of her own.