Mystery novelist Louise Penny boycotts U.S., cancels U.S. book launch amid trade war
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/03/2025 (258 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Canadian mystery author Louise Penny says she is boycotting the United States.
The bestselling writer from Quebec’s Eastern Townships says she won’t go to the U.S. until the end of the trade war, which she characterizes as an “economic sword” wielded by President Donald Trump.
She cancelled plans to launch her new novel “The Black Wolf” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and will instead hold the event at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
Mikael Theimer photo
Louise Penny’s latest Armand Gamache mystery is of the apocalyptic variety, with more menace than ever.
Penny also says she won’t take the book on a U.S. tour, a first for the novelist who has won numerous awards on both sides of the border and in 2021 cowrote a book with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
Penny says she doesn’t mean to punish American readers, but rather wants to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with fellow Canadians, many of whom could be impoverished by Trump’s threatened tariffs.
She says she also has moral objections to Trump’s policies that make travelling stateside “unpalatable.”
“What is happening is not just a potential economic catastrophe for Canada and so many other nations, it is a moral wound,” Penny wrote Friday in a statement on her website.
She says she hopes American readers will attend her events in Canada, where she says they’ll be welcomed “with open arms.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 7, 2025.
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