Red Deer Public Library is excited to announce the 2025 Red Deer Reads Community Book Club title, Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr. Conor will be visiting the library on October 25, 2025, from 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. for our Red Deer Reads main event, opens a new window, which includes an author presentation, Q&A, and book signing. Attendance is free, but registration is required.
About the Book:
From www.penguinrandomhouse.ca:
The Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions returns with a frenetic, propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp critique of modern activism and challenges readers to consider what “Land Back” might really look like.
Meet Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey’s uncle’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. But as Grey becomes increasingly single-minded in her newfound calling, their act of protest puts the pair and those close to them in peril, with devastating and sometimes fatal consequences.
For readers drawn to the electric storytelling of Morgan Talty and the taut register of Stephen Graham Jones, Conor Kerr’s Prairie Edge is at once a gripping, darkly funny caper and a raw reckoning with the wounds that persist across generations.
Awards:
- Shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize
- Finalist for the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize
- A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
- One of CBC's Best Canadian Fiction of 2024
About the Author:
From www.penguinrandomhouse.ca:
CONOR KERR is a Métis/Ukrainian writer living in Edmonton. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne Metis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty 4 and 6 territories in Saskatchewan. He grew up in Saskatoon, Edmonton, and other prairie towns and cities. In 2022 he was named one of CBC’s Writers to Watch. He is the author of the poetry collections An Explosion of Feathers and Old Gods, as well as the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize and won the 2022 ReLIT award. Conor is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta where he teaches creative writing.
About Red Deer Reads:
Red Deer Reads is a community-driven initiative celebrating the joy of reading by bringing Red Deerians together through a shared reading experience. Every two years, we select one compelling title to inspire dialogue, understanding, and connection across Red Deer. As part of the program, Red Deer Public Library hosts the winning author for a celebratory event and invites the community to take part in an engaging presentation from the author about their book.
Red Deer Reads began as an annual event in 2015. The initiative is now a biannual event, taking place every second year.
This year’s three finalists were The Annual Migration of Clouds, opens a new window by Premee Mohamed, We Are Already Ghosts, opens a new window by Kit Dobson, and Prairie Edge, opens a new window by Conor Kerr. Members of the public were invited to read all three books and vote for the title that they believed everyone in Red Deer should read. The final tally was very close, with less than 15 votes separating the top two titles.
Previous Red Deer Reads titles to date are:
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2015)
- The Outside Circle: A Graphic Novel by Patti LaBoucane-Benson, illustrated by Kelly Mellings (2016)
- We’re All in This Together by Amy Jones (2017)
- Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine by James Maskalyk (2019)
- The Skin We're In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power by Desmond Cole (2021)
- A Funny Kind of Paradise by Jo Owens (2023)
For more informatio, visit rdpl.org/reddeerreads, opens a new window