Family history, solo sojourns paved path for Patrick deWitt’s latest novel, Dodge City

It’s 1967 and Lee Clarke has just been kicked out of UCLA when he receives his draft letter in the mail. Rather than report for basic training, he hops in a car and sets off across America on an amphetamine-fuelled road trip to bid farewell to his fractured, dysfunctional family before crossing the border into Canada.

Such is the premise for B.C.-born, Portland-based Patrick deWitt’s sixth novel Dodge City, published in September by House of Anansi. He’s in Winnipeg tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location to launch the book.

The 51-year-old deWitt came to prominence with his sophomore novel, 2011’s The Sisters Brothers. The book was a critical and commercial success, winning the author the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and was adapted for the big screen in a film starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix.

His 2018 novel French Exit was also adapted for cinema, and his 2023 novel The Librarianist won deWitt the Leacock Medal for the second time. Dodge City is deWitt’s fourth novel to make the Giller Prize long list.

How AI allegations led Quebec author from prestigious awards to losing his publisher

MONTREAL - A few weeks ago, Haitian-born Quebec author Thélyson Orélien was collecting award nominations as his book topped bestseller lists. Then, allegations that he used artificial intelligence to write his debut novel, “C’était ça ou mourir” (“It was either that or dying”), started cropping up.

On Wednesday, his Quebec publisher announced it was cutting ties with the author after it found evidence it says indicates he used artificial intelligence to write his book. 

Here is a timeline of the rise of Orélien’s book and the mounting accusations that followed.

2017: Orélien said he began writing his book in 2017 in Laval, north of Montreal.

Publisher cuts ties with Quebec author after saying it found evidence of AI use

MONTREAL - A Quebec publishing house is cutting ties with author Thélyson Orélien after saying it found evidence he used artificial intelligence to write his debut novel.

Les Éditions du Boréal said in a press release that analysis of some documents' metadata indicated AI was used while writing the book. 

The publisher said it will not reprint the book or publish more books by Orélien.

Orélien did not respond to The Canadian Press' request for comment.

Author Emily St. John Mandel’s Exit Party a story of hope in dark times

If Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel Exit Party is in any way prophetic, Americans should be worried.

The B.C.-born, New York-based author’s bestselling fourth novel, 2014’s Station Eleven, chronicled a performing troupe in a post-pandemic world. The novel experienced a second wave of popularity when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, and when HBO’s Station Eleven miniseries premièred in late 2021.

Mandel launches Exit Party, her seventh novel, at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location tonight, where she’ll be joined in conversation by Winnipeg novelist Joan Thomas.

Published in September by HarperCollins, Exit Party sees Mandel once again working in the near future, in this case in a novel that features two timelines — one (dubbed the A-side in the novel) where the U.S. has fractured into a number of small countries following a civil war, and another (the B-side) where a singular, autocratic surveillance state has tightened its grip over its citizens.

On the night table: Carol Off

Carol Off: Author, True Patriot Love

I’m about to start On Treason By Patrick Lennox. I recently finished reading Margaret Atwood’s memoir Book of Lives and loved it; I came to understand, from her point of view, all the things that made me fall in love with Canadian literature as a young person. Now I understand how difficult it was to actually get published in this country from the points of view of those writing, and all the wonderful, wacky stories Atwood has about culture in Canada.

Carol Off launches True Patriot Love on Wednesday, Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

Obituary writing no dying discipline

For a certain generation, the Saturday-morning cartoons of childhood have been replaced by weekend obituaries. If you read them to check up on the ex, former colleagues or friends you lost touch with, you’re not alone.

New York Times obituarist Sam Roberts documented over 1,600 dearly departed. A Times journalist for 57 years, in his book he has compiled a compendium of uplifting and fascinating miniature biographies in a book of the dead that has garnered him a massive following of curious folks. He proves needn’t have known the deceased to appreciate their life lessons.

At age seven, Roberts witnessed the hearse of an executed couple, the Rosenbergs, which “fuelled my career and future reporting,” he says. “When I started writing obituaries for a living, the word died was rarely used. Instead, we see ‘met their demise’ or ‘gone home’ or ‘joined the ancestors.’” He credits obit writing to “learning more about accuracy, context, and skepticism than I would have in any journalism school.”

Are They Dead Yet? Gives new meaning to the word “deadline.” Roberts goaded his staff to research whether those in pre-death obits were, in fact, truly dead. He spotlights actor Abe Vigoda, who lived to age 97 — all of 37 years after he was declared gone.

Troubled juror in teenagers’ murder trial gets well in over his head

A schoolgirl has been literally scared to death, and two of her classmates are charged with her murder. But these aren’t ordinary schoolyard bullies — these are teenage witches in league with the devil.

Or at least one of the teenagers in London author Harriet Tyce’s new novel Witch Trial is saying the devil made her do it. She even claims she kissed the devil’s reeking anus (ew) as a show of allegiance.

Despite the novel’s title, the girls aren’t really on trial for being witches — after all, the story is set in 2019, and witches and Satan don’t really exist... do they? It’s hard to say, especially in the midst of a novel by an author well-known for her plot twists, turns and inversions.

Matthew Phillips, a jury member in the trial of the teenagers, is certainly confused about it all. The first male protagonist to appear in one of Harriet Tyce’s four novels, he’s in his late 40s and is rather unlikable — unless you happen to fancy your men petulant, arrogant, erratic and selfish.

Rick the Temp’s off-camera antics chronicled

For many elder millennials and young Gen Xers, Rick Campanelli was the face of entertainment television.

Campanelli got his start on MuchMusic after he won a competition to become an intern, because of which he earned the long-standing nickname Rick the Temp. It wasn’t long before that internship turned into regular on-air hosting gigs at the nation’s music station, and the fresh-faced 20-something was cemented as a pop-culture icon in Canada.

In his new memoir, Tempted, Campanelli details his life before and after Much, but with a considerably darker throughline than his jolly persona would indicate. For much of his adult life, Campanelli dealt with a crippling gambling addiction.

But first, Campanelli chronicles in exhaustive detail his early life in Hamilton, Ont., growing up as a first-generation Canadian in a large Italian family. These early chapters move slowly, but it’s easy to discern how important the anecdotes, descriptions and family members are to him.

Storied American travel writer explores Canada in reflective, wide-ranging account

What an excellent peace offering for Canadian readers at this time of animosity toward our neighbours to the south.

A whole book about Canada, generous but attuned to our many contradictions, from the dean of American travel writers, Paul Theroux.

Where does one start?

The obvious place would be with a joke about how True North: On the Road in Canada will find more eager eyes here than in the U.S., despite their having nine times our population.

Inherited dementia forces fraught Pennsylvania family to remake itself

The Vanishing Family is a real-life account of nine siblings in a middle-class American family who each face the possibility of having an inherited ticking time bomb – frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

Robert Kolker thoroughly examines how this relatively rare condition impacts the lives of seven sisters and two brothers (whose last names are withheld), all of whom have a 50-50 chance of inheriting the illness that strikes people in their prime — between the ages of 40 and 65.

The Vanishing Family is Kolker’s third investigative book. His first, Lost Girls, was adapted for Netflix in 2020. The New York Times Book Review selected his bestselling sophomore book, Hidden Valley Road — about a Colorado family of 10 who sees six members diagnosed with schizophrenia — for its top 10 book list of 2020.

The clan’s story in The Vanishing Family begins with Ollie and Jean, who came from Irish-Catholic families, met at college and married in 1950, settling in western Pennsylvania. The couple had nine children — Kathy, Christy, Sue, Dutch and Mary between 1951 and 1959, Peggy, Scott and Jenny followed between 1963 and 1966, then Barb arrived in 1976. By the time Barb was born, her parent’s marriage was on shaky ground — Ollie was unfaithful.

Prominent extremist organizations in Canada come and go, but the danger of violence remains

For Blood and Soil: Far-Right Extremism in Canada is a brief and broad survey of far-right movements in Canada.

Written by Amarnath Amarasingam, associate professor in the School of Religion and the department of political studies at Queen’s University, and Stephanie Carvin, associate professor of international relations at Carleton University, the book is an academic text and so the writing is clear and straightforward, but somewhat dry, offering information without commentary or colour.

The authors state they have made conscious choices as to what to include. However, these choices come with limitations. Their decision to begin the survey of violent hate groups in the 1920s means the book lacks a grounding in the ways in which white supremacy was instrumental to the founding of Canada and has permeated so many of our institutions.

The pair does remind us that violent right-wing extreme groups have killed more people in Canada than have extreme Islamic movements. This fact cannot be repeated enough, as it often fails to make it into the discourse on extremist violence in this country.

Kirkus Prize lauds trio of women writers

Closer to home, Winnipeg Swampy Cree author David A. Robertson’s All the Little Monsters: How I Learned to Live with Anxiety was selected as the top book in the young adult/adult category of the First Nations Communities Read for 2026-27.

Tayari Jones’ novel ‘Kin’ wins the Kirkus Prize for fiction, earning a $50,000 award

NEW YORK (AP) — Tayari Jones' “Kin,” a novel tracing the life and times of two Black friends from small-town Louisiana, has won the Kirkus Prize for fiction.

Pamela Colloff's “Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast” won for nonfiction, and Elizabeth Acevedo's “Anger Is Only a Shadow” was awarded for young readers' literature.

Each of the three authors receives a $50,000 cash prize.

Colson Whitehead's “Cool Machine,” Douglas Stuart's “John of John” and Patrick Radden Keefe's “London Falling” were among the finalists.

At Toronto event, Margaret Atwood reiterates need for due process in Galloway case

TORONTO - As Steven Galloway concluded his testimony in his defamation trial in Vancouver, in Toronto, author Margaret Atwood reiterated her stance as a defender of due process in his case. 

Atwood, who was receiving an award at a Journalists for Human Rights event, spoke about her decision to sign an open letter in November 2016 calling for an investigation into how the University of British Columbia handled the Galloway case. 

Atwood faced intense backlash and scrutiny from the public after expressing support for the former UBC professor, comparing the online criticism to the French Revolution. 

“Luckily, I couldn’t be fired from the university or blacklisted from festivals,” she said. “Or if I was, I didn’t notice.”