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Lauren B. Davis

Lauren B. Davis’s most recent work is EVEN SO, to be published by Dundurn Press in the autumn of 2021. It is the story of what happens when compassion and passion collide. Love, faith, lust, guilt, redemption, and the moment of transformation of two women, one a privileged Princeton matron, the other a Catholic nun suffering the silence of god. Can we care about those who do harm? Who deserves forgiveness, and what does redemption mean? Read EVEN SO to explore these questions.

THE GRIMOIRE OF KENSINGTON MARKET (named one of the best books of 2018 by the Globe & Mail, and a finalist for the Fred Lerner, Canadian Authors Association Best Book of the Year), is a story about a bookstore that is the repository of all the stories in the world, and that no one finds unless intended to do so. It is also about addiction, love, guilt, and flying caribous.

Davis is also the author of AGAINST A DARKENING SKY, a novel set in 7th c. Northumbria, as well as THE EMPTY ROOM, published in 2013. A searing, raw and powerful a portrayal of the chaos and pain of alcoholism. Named one of the “Best Books of the Year” by The National Post, and the Winnipeg Free Press, “Editors’ Pick” by Amazon and a “Critics’ Pick” by The Coast (Nova Scotia). Told with compassion, insight and an irresistible gallows humor, THE EMPTY ROOM takes us to the depths of addiction, only to find a revelation at its heart: the importance and grace of one person reaching out to another.

OUR DAILY BREAD (2011), was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named as one of the “Best Books of the Year” by The Globe & Mail and The Boston Globe.

She is also the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels, THE RADIANT CITY (2006), a finalist for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize; and THE STUBBORN SEASON (2002), a named as one of the Top 15 Bestselling First Novels by Amazon.ca and Books in Canada. She has published two short story collections, AN UNREHEARSED DESIRE (2008) and RAT MEDICINE & OTHER UNLIKELY CURATIVES (2000). Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, the ReLit Award and she is the recipient of two Mid-Career Writer Sustaining grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. A well-respected creative writing teacher who has taught in Geneva, Paris and Ireland, as well as in the USA and Canada, she is also a past Mentor with the Humber College Creative Writing by Correspondence Program, and past Writer-in-Residence at Trinity Church, Princeton. She now leads monthly SHARPENING THE QUILL writing workshops in Princeton, New Jersey.


“If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense that you are doing what you were born to do and what could be better, in the end, than that?”
Lauren B. Davis
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