Claudia Dey is a Canadian writer. She was born in Toronto, Ontario. She studied English Literature at McGill University and playwriting at the National Theatre School of Canada, where she graduated in 1997.
Queen Mab (2026) Emily McBride "A novel of great intimacy that exacts real gravitational pull, Queen Mab plunges deep into the specific loneliness of new motherhood and the way it rewrites our world order. From a visceral understanding of the shifts in a woman's mind as she changes states, it crosses into the animal and fairy worlds and beyond-into questions of origin and the search for wholeness across time and text. Its peculiar beauties and horrors are told through an unclouded lens, never not funny and always tender, and in prose that is alive, charged by its own velocity."
Mare (2026) Emily Haworth-Booth "I read Mare voraciously, ignoring my life. Deeply human and profoundly funny, it has the wisdom held by the best prose and the extra insight that comes with sorrow. Emily Haworth-Booth understands that grief is a lonesome, many-chambered thing; that obsessive love can rescript a life; that there is solace in duty and care. An incandescent debut-bare and clean and artful. It enters the soul."
Madwoman (2024) Chelsea Bieker "Unputdownable. Harrowing while somehow also being deeply funny and furiously wise. Chelsea Bieker is a daredevil and a wonder."
The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman (2023) Molly Lynch "Bold and brilliant. The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman is a novel that takes on the uncertainty of our present moment. Molly Lynch's voice is fearless as she gives us a story that is both a page-turner and radical new mythology for our time."
In a Land Without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark (2023) Jonathan Garfinkel "A wild, page-turner of a novel from the singular, seductive mind of Jonathan Garfinkel. In a Land without Dogs the Cats Learn to Bark is bold and otherworldly, a serenade for a lost nation, a love song to revolution. Reminiscent of Jennifer Egan's literary sleight of hand, and Rachel Kushner's structural and intellectual daring, Garfinkel takes on the legacy of the Soviet Union via a multigenerational mystery, deftly leading us from Moscow to Tbilisi, Charlie Parker to Noam Chomsky, performance art to political theatre - his humour cutting deeply and darkly through everything and everyone. A wholly electrifying debut from an exhilarating, rebel talent."
The Listeners (2021) Jordan Tannahill "One of those rare novels that entered my soul, rearranged my brain cells and then my world view. Tannahill writes with the heat and wisdom of a God."
The Captive (2021) Fiona King Foster "The Captive is a wonder, a wild horse in the sure and steady hands of the brilliant Fiona King Foster. Electrifying and otherworldly, The Captive gives us a new feminist heroine, an Offred traversing Cormac McCarthy’s hazardous dreamscapes. Through the ingenious and fierce-hearted Brooke Holland, King takes us to the very sheer edge of survival, love and loyalty. This debut novel reads like a lightning storm, and then it stays with you, leaving a profound impression—ghostly, gorgeous and moving."
Sad Janet (2020) Lucie Britsch "Sad Janet is a tragicomic riot of a book—charging, foul-mouthed and tender, across the modern condition. It is an hysterically funny and slyly moving defense for feeling all there is to feel in a medicated world. Lucie Britsch's outcast heroine, Janet, is the dog-whispering, post-Goth cousin to Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag. Terrifying, glorious, and one for the ages."
Foe (2018) Iain Reid "Spare, consuming, unforgettable. Foe is a dark arrow from a truly original mind. Page by eerie page, Iain Reid pulls the known world out from under you, and leaves you trapped inside a marriage’s most haunting question: can I be replaced? This is a book that seeps into your bloodstream––and crowns Iain Reid the king of deadpan, philosophical horror."
