The Canada Reads 2024 longlist is here!
The panellists and the books they choose to champion will be revealed on Jan. 11
Canada Reads is back! This year, the great Canadian book debate is looking for one book to carry us forward.
When we are at a crossroads, when uncertainty is upon us, when we have faced challenges and are ready for the future, how do we know where to go next? This collection of books is about finding the resilience and the hope needed to carry on and keep moving forward.
The 2024 longlist is:
- Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
- Bad Medicine by Christopher Twin
- Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes & Christina Wong
- Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
- Junie by Chelene Knight
- Mamaskatch by Darrel J. McLeod
- Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
- Reuniting with Strangers by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio
- Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji
- Sunshine Nails by Mai Nguyen
- The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou
- The Innocents by Michael Crummey
- The Winter Knight by Jes Battis
- What Comes Echoing Back by Leo McKay Jr.
- Woke Up Like This by Amy Lea
The five panellists and the five books they choose to champion will be revealed on Jan. 11, 2024.
The debates will take place March 4-7, 2024.
The year 2024 marks the 23rd edition of Canada Reads.
Canada Reads premiered in 2002. The first winning book was In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, which was defended by musician Steven Page. In 2021, CBC Books put together a retrospective to look back at the show's biggest moments and its impact on Canadian literature.
Last year's winner was Jeopardy! star Mattea Roach, who championed Kate Beaton's memoir Ducks.
Other past Canada Reads winners include Five Little Indians by Michelle Good, championed by fashion journalist Christian Allaire, Lawrence Hill's The Illegal, championed by Olympian Clara Hughes, Kim Thúy's Ru, championed by TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey and Lisa Moore's February, championed by comedian Trent McClellan.
You can see a complete list of past winners and contenders here.
Learn more about the 15 books on the Canada Reads 2024 longlist below.
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Bad Cree is a horror-infused novel that centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina's untimely death. The lines between her dreams and reality start to blur when she begins seeing a murder of crows following her around the city — and starts getting threatening text messages from someone claiming to be her dead sister. Looking to escape, Mackenzie heads back to her hometown in rural Alberta where she finds her family still entrenched in their grief. With her dreams intensifying and getting more dangerous, Mackenzie must confront a violent family legacy and reconcile with the land and her community.
"I really wanted to represent, in this novel, the important relationships that aunties have had in my life," Jessica Johns said on The Next Chapter.
I really wanted to represent, in this novel, the important relationships that aunties have had in my life.- Jessica Johns
"And the aunties in the novel are a mishmash of all of my aunties in small ways and one of the things that I wanted to do was also kind of subvert this idea of the 'all-knowing' native person. That's kind of funny to me because all of the brilliant people in my life, all of the Indigenous people who are so, so brilliant are also very human and flawed and complex."
Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Johns won the 2020 Writers' Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name. Bad Cree also won the MacEwan Book of the Year prize. Johns is currently based in Vancouver.
Bad Medicine by Christopher Twin
Inspired by Cree folklore and modern Cree life, Bad Medicine follows five teens who share chilling horror stories around a campfire.
Christopher Twin is from the Swan River First Nations reservation in northern Alberta. Currently based in Edmonton, he does comic work and illustrations as a freelancer.
Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes & Christina Wong
Set in Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market, Denison Avenue is a moving portrait of a city undergoing mass gentrification and a Chinese Canadian elder experiencing the existential challenges of getting old and being Asian in North America. Recently widowed, Wong Cho Sum takes long walks through the city, collecting bottles and cans and meeting people on her journeys in a bid to ease her grief.
Daniel Innes is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. He works in painting, installation, graphic and textile design, illustration, sign painting and tattooing.
Christina Wong is a Toronto writer, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who also works in sound installation, audio documentaries and photography.
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
Happy Hour is a novel about two women in their 20s — Isa Epley and her best friend Gala — who are having the time of their lives in New York City during the summer of 2013. Life for Isa and Gala is all about pleasure and ambition. This includes fun, partying and living in the moment, no matter the eventual cost.
"What's interesting to me is how women create their own lives and narratives," Marlowe Granados said on The Next Chapter. "What I also wanted to show about women's friendship is their journey — and the way that they are little adventurers. That's more important than having these long-term flirtations or romances."
What I also wanted to show about women's friendship is their journey — and the way that they are little adventurers.- Marlowe Granados
"But it is also an important exercise to show that these girls do desire men in a certain way."
"They're always drawn to them and they can map out how their attraction works. And they like to look at them, which is, I think, quite refreshing and nice."
Granados is a writer, filmmaker and podcaster based in Toronto. Happy Hour is her first novel.
Junie by Chelene Knight
Junie is a novel about Junie, a creative and observant child, who moves to Hogan's Alley in the 1930s with her mother. Hogan's Alley is a thriving Black immigrant community in Vancouver's east end and Junie quickly makes meaningful relationships. As she moves into adulthood, Junie explores her artistic talents and sexuality, but her mother sinks further into alcoholism and the thriving neighbourhood once filled with potential begins to change.
Junie won the 2023 City of Vancouver Book Award.
"When we do the research, we always see the same things popping up: that the neighbourhood itself was in squalor, that it was a community riddled with crime, that there were all these terrible things happening," she said in an interview with CBC Books.
"But we weren't really looking at the community; we weren't really looking at people. We weren't looking at the fact that their neighbourhood had these Black-owned businesses. We weren't looking at the conversations and the everyday living. So that's what I wanted to highlight.
I wanted to showcase that joy can live inside even the most tumultuous times.- Chelene Knight
"This conversation around Black voice becomes really important, because we're often centring stories around pain, heartache and trauma. I wanted to showcase that joy can live inside even the most tumultuous times."
Chelene Knight is a writer and poet from Vancouver, now living in Harrison Hot Springs, B.C. She is the author of Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, which won the 2018 Vancouver Book Award.
Mamaskatch by Darrel J. McLeod
Darrel J. McLeod's Mamaskatch is a memoir of his upbringing in Smith, Alta., raised by his fierce Cree mother, Bertha. McLeod describes vivid memories of moose stew and wild peppermint tea, surrounded by siblings and cousins. From his mother, McLeod learned to be proud of his heritage and also shares her fractured stories from surviving the residential school system.
"The whole thing was very beautiful," said McLeod in an interview with CBC Books. "It was like I was drawing closer to my family. We were kind of conspiring or cooperating to get these stories out, even though, if they were still alive, my mother in particular, it would have been very hurtful to work through that stuff. But it was like we were giving each other permission to go through all that stuff again and heal."
It was like we were giving each other permission to go through all that stuff again and heal.- Darrel J. McLeod
"With the book now published and out to the world, I feel like a different person. I walk taller and have more confidence and am generally happier. I was always happy, but I feel even happier and more complete somehow. I went through life, all those years, carrying the burden of grief and guilt, feeling at different points in my life that I'd been a bad person. I just put it all out there, bared my soul to the world and said, 'Here it is. Here I am. This is what I've been through. This is what I've done.'"
Mamaskatch won the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction.
McLeod is Nehiyaw (Cree) writer from treaty eight territory in northern Alberta. His latest book is the novel A Season in Chezgh'un. McLeod lives in Sooke, B.C., and Puerto Vallarta.
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
Meet Me at the Lake finds 32-year-old Fern Brookbanks stuck: she can't quite stop thinking about one perfect day she spent in her 20s. By chance, she met a man named Will Baxter and the two spent a romantic 24 hours in Toronto, after which they promised to meet up one year later. But Will never showed up.
Now, instead of living in the city like she thought she would, Fern manages her mother's Muskoka resort by the lake, a role she promised herself she'd never take on. Disillusioned with her life, Fern is shocked when Will shows up at her door, suitcase in hand, asking to help. Why is he here after all this time and more importantly, can she trust him to stay? It's clear Will has a secret but Fern isn't sure if she's ready to hear it all these years later.
"What I love as a romance reader is watching two people who can feel very real going through real problems and trying to figure themselves out, trying to figure another person out and ultimately there is this happy ending," Carley Fortune said in an interview on The Next Chapter.
I want people to feel like they've snooped on a real relationship and I want to give people an escape.- Carley Fortune
"So you go on this very emotional journey but you feel safe. I needed that when I was reading in 2020, and I needed that as a writer. I think my books do look at tough subjects. Meet Me at the Lake deals with mental health, with grief and loss. But ultimately, I want to give people hope. I want people to feel like they've snooped on a real relationship and I want to give people an escape."
Carley Fortune is a Toronto-based journalist and writer who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. She is also the author of Every Summer After.
Reuniting with Strangers by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio
When five-year-old Monolith arrives from the Philippines to join his mother in Canada he lashes out, attacking her and destroying his new home in the linked short story collection Reuniting with Strangers. The characters in Reuniting with Strangers are all dealing with feelings of displacement and estrangement caused as a result of migrating to Canada seeking opportunity.
"I went to a school as a settlement worker a long time ago, and the teachers were saying, 'We wish you were here earlier. There was this family that really needed your help, but they've moved on to another school,'" Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio said in an interview with CBC Books.
"They said he [the boy] was upset to the point where at nighttime, he would get quite violent with her [his mother] and she would call the police to restrain him. I thought to myself, 'How do you get to this point where you're calling the police on a five-year-old boy?' Second, 'Why is he so angry? Is it behavioural or is it something else?'"
He impacts a lot of change and he appears at moments of change in people's narratives.- Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio
"This was in my head for years, so that's why Monolith's story ends up in all the other stories. He impacts a lot of change and he appears at moments of change in people's narratives."
Austria-Bonifacio is a Filipina-Canadian author, speaker and school board consultant who builds bridges between educators and Filipino families. She was on the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize longlist.
Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji
Shut Up You're Pretty is a short fiction collection that tells stories of a young woman coming of age in the 21st century in Scarborough, Ont. The disarming, punchy and observant stories follow her as she shaves her head in an abortion clinic waiting room, bonds with her mother over fish and contemplates her Congolese traditions at a wedding.
Shut Up You're Pretty was on the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize shortlist and won the 2020 Edmund White Award for debut fiction.
"I was first writing these stories independently and I realized that I was writing the same character for the protagonist," Téa Mutonji said in an interview with CBC Books. "I wanted to explore why I was doing that. I didn't want to write a collection of short stories about a young Black woman living her life and have it be suggested that it was the experience of all Black women. I did understand, however, that it would probably be regarded as such because we don't have enough young women of colour writing."
I didn't want to write a collection of short stories about a young Black woman living her life and have it be suggested that it was the experience of all Black women.- Téa Mutonji
"I decided to keep it to one character so this could be viewed as one experience. That was important to me, to show that this is one woman experiencing different women in multiple ways and experiencing different experiences in multiple ways. This is not at all the experience of every person of colour, of every women, of every immigrant and of every person from that Galloway neighbourhood."
CBC Books named Mutonji a writer to watch in 2019. Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Mutonji is also the editor of the anthology Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology. She currently lives in Toronto.
Sunshine Nails by Mai Nguyen
A humorous and heartfelt novel, Sunshine Nails is about a Vietnamese Canadian family who are trying to keep their family business, a nail salon called Sunshine Nails, open. In addition to increasing rent, a new chain salon store named Take Ten opens in the same neighbourhood, and the family's business struggles to remain running. Family relationships are put to the test as they work together to save their nail salon.
"I wouldn't have written this book without my parents," Mai Nguyen said on The Next Chapter. "Since I was eight, my parents have run a nail salon in Halifax for a very long time. It was where I hung out after school; I did my homework there, I brought my friends there to hang out and when I got older they hired me to do manicures and pedicures and it was where I spent a lot of my childhood."
It was a refuge for them, it was their financial salvation and I learned that thousands of Vietnamese immigrants in Canada and the US opened up nail salons all over.- Mai Nguyen
"As I got older, I realized that my parents weren't the only ones that operated a nail salon. There were so many other Vietnamese immigrants in Halifax that also opened up nail salons. It was a refuge for them, it was their financial salvation and I learned that thousands of Vietnamese immigrants in Canada and the US opened up nail salons all over. It was their way to build a livelihood and seeing my parents thrive just from operating a nail salon inspired me to write a book showing the behind the scenes of what goes on there."
Mai Nguyen was raised in Halifax and currently lives in Toronto. She has written for publications such as Wired, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star as a journalist and copywriter. Sunshine Nails is her debut novel.
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou
The Future is set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. Its residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters, arrives in the city, she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society.
"There's still a huge French community in that area, in southern Ontario, the area of Windsor and also in the Michigan area — so the French never left in reality — but my idea was that it never became American," Catherine Leroux said on The Next Chapter.
"And so basically in my world, Detroit or Fort Detroit is the second biggest francophone city in North America after Montreal. So that's the setting. I think that as soon as I started being interested in the history of Detroit, it went without saying that I would have to delve into that."
It was a nice way to rewrite history and rewrite the history of language at the same time.- Catherine Leroux
"And then it was also for novelistic reasons because I wanted to be able to write dialogue that felt closer to the dialects and the French that I hear around me. And if I'm writing about English characters, but I'm writing their dialogue into French, then it can't really take that shape. So it was a nice way to rewrite history and rewrite the history of language at the same time."
The Future won the Jacques-Brossard Award for speculative fiction.
Catherine Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collection Le mur mitoyen. Leroux won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for English to French translation for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.
Susan Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for her work. She lives in Calgary.
The Innocents by Michael Crummey
In The Innocents, a young brother and sister live in isolation in Newfoundland, surviving alone on the bits of knowledge their parents left behind. Their loyalty to one another is the reason they are able to persist through storms and illness, but their relationship is tested as they grow older.
"I was thinking of my own father when writing this book," Michael Crummey said on The Next Chapter. "He started working with his father in the Labrador fishery when he was nine. He never had a childhood. This was in the 1930s into the 1940s, not the 18th century. I imagine that those children would have been pretty well versed in work. Everybody had to work just to survive."
They have nothing to fall back on except their own wits.- Michael Crummey
"In the book, the two main characters — being 11 — are pretty close to an adult, in terms of work. But they know almost nothing about the world and nothing about life outside that cove. They have nothing to fall back on except their own wits."
The Innocents was shortlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Michael Crummey is a poet and novelist from Newfoundland and Labrador. He has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize twice and the Governor General's Literary Award three times. His other books include the novels The Adversary, Sweetland and Galore and the poetry collection Little Dogs.
The Winter Knight by Jes Battis
In The Winter Knight, Jes Battis reimagines the King Arthur legends as a modern, queer detective. These days, the Knights of the Round Table live in Vancouver. When one of them turns up dead, Hildie, the lead investigator, is determined to find the murderer. On her list of suspects are Wayne, an autistic reincarnation of a medieval figure trying to keep up with modern times, and Burt, Wayne's love interest. To solve the case, Hildie will have to come up against some powerful adversaries, including knights, runesmiths and a beast hunting people's dreams.
"I grew up as a socially awkward queer and autistic kid in a small town in B.C., with no resources," Battis said on The Next Chapter.
I was supposed to connect with the knights, I suspect, but I connected more with these shadowy wizard-like figures, particularly because they didn't seem to have to follow the rules of society.- Jes Battis
"I didn't really see anyone who looked like me. So I was drawn to some of these high fantasy stories. I was supposed to connect with the knights, I suspect, but I connected more with these shadowy wizard-like figures, particularly because they didn't seem to have to follow the rules of society. They just did what they wanted."
Battis is a queer autistic writer and teacher at the University of Regina, splitting their time between the prairies and the west coast. They wrote the Occult Special Investigator series and Parallel Parks series. Battis' first novel, Night Child, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award.
What Comes Echoing Back by Leo McKay Jr.
In What Comes Echoing Back, Sam and Robot share a few things in common. First, they are both in the same high school music class. Second, both of them became infamous for the worst things that ever happened to them. While the Internet moves on and small town rumour mills keep cycling, they can't. That is, until a friendship forms and they find music just might be the key to continue playing along.
Leo McKay Jr. is a writer and a high school teacher. He is known for his novel Twenty-Six, which won the Dartmouth Book Award and was chosen for the One Book Nova Scotia event. His debut collection of stories, Like This, also won the Dartmouth Book Award and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Woke Up Like This by Amy Lea
In Woke Up Like This, ultra-organised Charlotte Wu is 17 years old and trying to plan the perfect prom. While hanging up decorations in the gym with her archnemesis J. T. Renner, Charlotte falls off a ladder and crash lands directly on Renner. The next thing Charlotte knows she is waking up in a strange room, she is 30 and her and Renner are engaged to be married. Charlotte and Renner are determined to figure out what happened and how to get themselves back to their 17-year-old selves.
Amy Lea is an Ottawa-based contemporary romance writer and Canadian bureaucrat. Her previous novels include Exes and O's and Set on You.
