Book Marks: Edmonton author back with first new work after Governor General's award

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Sarah Everett didn’t feel a lot of pressure on her latest release after winning a major book award last year.

Fortunately, her next book was almost done when she found out she won the Governor General’s Book Awards, and it’s now a month from being released.

Everett’s newest book, The Shape of Lost Things, follows Skye and her family as her brother Finn finds his way home. Their parents are separated, and their father had disappeared a few years before with Finn, and no one knows where they have been.

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While his return is celebrated by Skye’s mother and the rest of the family, she struggles through conflicting emotions and starts to believe he’s not even the real Finn. She has to deal with how her own life is changing, as well as the changes her brother’s return brings.

Everett was inspired by the real-life cases of children gone missing, such as the 2002 kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart. The Utah child went missing for almost a year before, before being found less than 30 kilometres from her home.

“Obviously the best-case scenario is that the children in those instances are found alive and well,” says Everet. “But what would life be like for loved ones for those left behind? Even a happy ending disrupts the family system.”

It’s her second book for middle school grade readers, targeted at those between the ages of 12 and 16. Her first book, The Probability of Everything, was so successful it won the Governor General’s Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2023. Her work has even garnered a wider audience, attracting adult readers to her incredible and emotionally charged writing.

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“I am of the opinion that really good art is universal,” says Everett. “You can enjoy stories that are for older audiences, or younger audiences, it doesn’t really matter what the content is. It just has to be a good story.”

Everett also returns to science in her latest work, giving her characters a deep connection and curiosity about the natural world. In her first book, the main character Kemi loves facts, figures and statistics. In The Shape of Lost Things, it’s Skye’s parents who are science-obsessed – both of her parents are scientists and try to instill in their children a love of the natural world.

“I like playing with the idea of playing with different ways we relate to science. I like her having a relationship with science that wasn’t as enthusiastic,” says Everett.

The Shape of Lost Things will be released Oct. 22 from HarperCollins Canada. But like most authors, she’s also working on several projects already, including a look at returning to Young Adult Fiction, a genre where she’s already published a number of titles.

For more information about the author, visit her website.

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Two Edmonton authors on Giller list

Two authors with Edmonton connections have been longlisted for one of the country’s premier book awards.

Connor Kerr and Caroline Adderson were among the dozen authors on the Giller Prize longlist, announced early in September.

Kerr is a Metis author from the Edmonton area. His book, Prairie Edge focuses on what “Land Back” might look like on the prairies, and how to return to a form of indigenous governance. His characters release massive prairie animals in city parks. The book was released on April 16 from Strange Light, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada. His last book, Avenue of Champions, was also longlisted for the Giller in 2022.

Adderson’s book, A Way to be Happy, is a series of short stories about characters trying to find happiness, published by Biblioasis. She was born in Edmonton but currently lives in Vancouver.

The Giller Prize has been plagued by controversy, with around 20 authors pulling their books for consideration this year over the prize’s main sponsor, Scotiabank, and its subsidiary’s investment in an Israeli weapons manufacturer. Scotiabank removed its name from the title of the prize this year.

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The Giller shortlist will be released sometime this fall, with the winner announced at a ceremony in Toronto in November.

A sci-fi thriller from first-time author

A young Edmonton author has taken a leap into the publishing world, releasing his first book this summer.

The Malignancy, a science fiction thriller, is the first release from Liam Wilson. Ashton Beachum is kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire and taken to Turkey, where he’s thrown into a time-travelling thriller. Beachum is one of the few people with the genetic sequence to travel through time without developing a fatal disease from the process. But can he survive the ancient past?

The book is the debut release from Wilson, who has been working on the novel for the last year and a half while finishing high school. He says the book was inspired by his own experiences with Tourette Syndrome.

The Malignancy was published through Kindle Direct Publishing. You can find out more about the author at his website.

EPL publishes collection of local writers

The Edmonton Public Library is again highlighting the work of local authors with the launch of their latest collection.

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Capital City Press Volume 4 features short stories from more than 30 local authors, from short stories to poetry and nonfiction. The collection was released over the summer and was guest edited by the library’s Writer in Residence Premee Mohamed.

The entire anthology is available for free on the Capital City Press website.

Readings of the stories are also available on the Capital City Press podcast.

New vegetable cookbook from area author

An Edmonton-area author has released a cookbook for green thumbs looking to use the produce from their garden.

Fresh Grown is the newest release from Andrea Kristin, a cookbook that focuses on vegetables and enhancing the garden-to-table mentality for greenthumbs and gardeners throughout the country. She not only wrote the recipes to help home cooks with more than 50 different types of vegetables, but she also took photos for the book.

Kristin lives on an organic market garden farm called Grey Arrow Farm with her family in Armena, about 50 kilometres southeast of Edmonton. Her book was published by Grey Arrow Press Publishing and was released in June.

For more information about the author, visit her website.

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