AUDIENCE: For readers of Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Also for fans of the TV show This Is Us.

BOOK CLUB POTENTIAL: An opportunity to reach the segment of readers who enjoy titles on the Hello Sunshine Book Club list. This is a novel that leans commercial without sacrificing plot, beautiful writing, or character development.

GEN X READERSHIP: The circumstances in the book will be deeply relatable to many Gen X readers who will see themselves in the main character’s life circumstances. (She’s at a point in her life when her 18-year-old daughter is getting ready to leave home and her relationship with her mother is strained due to her mother’s failing health. She’s also dealing with very stressful career pressures.)

AWARDS: Krista’s short fiction has twice been a finalist for the Journey Prize. Her essay writing won the PRISM international creative non-fiction contest in 2016, has been featured in Best Canadian Essays and nominated for a National Magazine Award.

AUTHOR PROFILE: Foss’s nonfiction piece “Cloud Seeing” was selected for Granta Magazine’s Canada issue, guest edited by Madeleine Thien.

HAMILTON COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS: Foss is the co-founder of Hamilton’s GritLit Literary Festival. She is also a Senior Editor at Hamilton Review of Books. She’s devoted to growing an inclusive literary community and is very well situated to promote and speak to her work.

KRISTA FOSS’s short fiction has appeared in Granta and has twice been a finalist for the Journey Prize. Her first novel, Smoke River, won the Hamilton Literary Award. She’s an award-winning essayist who has worked as a bartender, journalist, and teacher. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Author Residence: Hamilton, ON

Praise for Half Life and Krista Foss:

“Every sentence is alive in this miraculous novel—one in which the listening ear of Niels Bohr bends towards an aspiring physicist, where history walks beside science, and where a world ‘undaunted by paradox’ exists only in theory. What do we believe, and who, and why? How do we continue if denied the love entwined with belief? What if forgiveness itself becomes a lasting injury? Krista Foss has a vast heart. She is a stunning writer.” —Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
 
“This is the most beautiful novel I’ve read in a long time. Each chapter reveals new treasures: holographic, exquisite, shattering. I read it with wonder. Krista Foss is an artist.” —Sarah Selecky, author of Radiant Shimmering Light
 
“A sensitive portrayal of one woman’s attempt to find her place in the world, while grappling with the decades-long fallout from a family rift. Emotionally complex and beautifully written, Foss’s Half Life is a tender exploration of the perils of silence and the power that can come from speaking the truth.” —Saleema Nawaz, author of Songs for the End of the World
 
“Krista Foss wields language with the precision and beauty of a shard of glass, delicate yet knife-like. With intelligence, wit, and uncanny insight, she explores the complexities of family dynamics gently and viscerally, like a tongue probing an aching tooth. Half Life is a mesmerizing novel about the chain reaction set off by the choices we make, the stories we tell ourselves, and the secrets we keep.” —Amy Jones, author of Every Little Piece of Me