Congratulations to B.C. writer Loghan Paylor on winning the 2026 edition of CBC Canada Reads!
Now in its 25th year, Canada Reads is the much-anticipated annual book debate where five Canadian celebrities each champion one book they believe all Canadians should read. Over four days, they debate and vote to eliminate one book per day until only one remains: the winner. This year, five contenders from British Columbia were longlisted in the debate, showcasing the wide range of genres, styles, and topics tackled by local authors, with two of them making it onto the shortlist.
The debate finalized on April 16, where The Cure for Drowning, championed by musician and writer Tegan Quin, was named winner. In addition to Paylor’s novel, A Minor Chorus by Billy Ray Belcourt also made it onto the shortlist and was championed by filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. The other three B.C. books that were selected for the longlist are Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang, Slice The Water by PP Wong, and The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee. Read more about them on BC Creates.
Loghan Paylor is a queer, trans writer, and The Cure for Drowning is their debut novel. In addition to its Canada Reads win, it was was long-listed for the 2024 Giller Prize, named a Globe and Mail Best Book, and a finalist for the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes. Their other work has appeared in Room, Prairiefire, CBC Arts and on the long-list for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. A graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, they have an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and divide their time between teaching, writing, and co-owning a game company.
Courtesy of Penguin Random House Canada
Evocative, magical and luminously written, The Cure for Drowning is a boundary-pushing love story but a Canadian historical novel that boldly centres queer and non-binary characters in unprecedented ways.
Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since, at ten, they fell through the river ice and drowned—only to be nursed back to life by their mother’s Celtic magic. A daredevil in boy’s clothes, Kit chafes at every aspect of a farmgirl’s life, driving that same mother to distraction with worry about where Kit will ever fit in. When Rebekah Kromer, an elegant German-Canadian doctor’s daughter, moves to town with her parents in April 1939, Rebekah has no doubt as to who 19-year-old Kit is. Soon she and Kit, and Kit’s older brother, Landon, are drawn tight in a love triangle that will tear them and their families apart, and send each of them off on a separate path to war.
Landon signs up for the Navy. Kit, now known as Christopher, joins the Royal Air Force, becoming a bomber navigator relied on for his luck and courage. Rebekah serves with naval intelligence in Halifax, until one more collision with Landon changes the course of her life and draws her back to the McNair farm—a place where she’d once known love. Fallen on even harder times, the McNairs welcome all the help she is able to give, and she believes she has found peace at last. Until, with the war over, Kit and Landon return home.
Told in the vivid, unforgettable voices of Kit and Rebekah, The Cure for Drowning is a powerfully engrossing novel that imagines a history that is truer than true.
