There is no simple answer for what it means to be Canadian. There are a thousand answers that come together. But part of that is that there is a national mythology.

To map the Governor General's Award is to map both the past and the future of Canadian literature, and to be nominated for my first book is wonderful.

I believe that art elevates humanity. I feel incredibly privileged to be part of that.

I grew up reading thrillers, science fiction, fantasy - you name it - and one day I asked myself if there was a reason why a fear of spiders was so common. Was there something buried deep in our evolutionary history that made being scared of spiders a survival instinct?

I liked Shakespeare in high school, but in university I spent a semester studying in London, and it was sort of in the middle of me falling deeply in love with literature, and I took a Shakespeare course with a professor who couldn't imagine anything more important than Shakespeare.

There's very little that's comparable to seeing the spark in a student's face when she gets something that she's been struggling with.