Entertaining: Author longlisted for Booker Prize coming to Kingston

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Published Sep 17, 2025 • Last updated 4 hours ago • 7 minute read

Author Maria Reva’s novel “Endling” is on the finalists’ longlist for this year’s Booker Prize and is now also in the running for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Reva is taking part in Kingston WritersFest on Sunday at the Marriott Hotel. Photo by Anya Chibis/Supplied photo /jpg, KI, apsmcArticle content

What do you get when you combine a rare species of snail, a dedicated scientist, two feminist militants and 13 bachelors?

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The answer is Maria Reva’s Booker Prize-longlisted novel Endling, which she will be discussing at a Kingston WritersFest event with fellow author Ian Williams on Sunday afternoon.

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The book follows scientist Yeva, who works out of her mobile lab in Ukraine, where she studies and breeds endangered snails (an endling is the last of a species, in this case a snail named Lefty). To fund her work, she takes part in “romance tours” with Westerners who are looking for a bride. It’s through those tours she encounters Nastia and Solomiya, who are searching for their mother, who opposed such tours.

While that may sound like the plot of a comedic kidnapping caper, that’s because that’s what the book was supposed to be at first.

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But then Russia invaded her native Ukraine in February 2022 and everything changed.

“I was already deep (into it) when the Russians launched their full-scale invasion, and I just did not know how to continue the book at that point,” Reva explained from her home in British Columbia.

“It just seemed like, ‘How do I keep writing a book when its setting is destroyed in real time?’ The premise just didn’t seem fitting to me anymore.”

She stopped writing and took some time off to figure out what he next steps would be. Reva, who wound up travelling to Ukraine with her sister in search of their grandfather, decided to restructure the novel, inserting herself in the story and picking up the caper story after initially ending it 100 pages in.

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The book’s unique structure was inspired by author Salvador Plascencia’s 2005 novel The People of Paper.

“His book is also about a personal derailment,” Reva said.

“So he starts with one premise, and then he undergoes a horrific heartbreak and his own real life story derails the narrative completely. And then the ex-girlfriend becomes a character in the novel, and the novel restarts again with her name cut out physically from pages.

“It’s a very, very cool book. And I thought, ‘Wow. Well, if you can do something like that, maybe I can try something new as well.’ ”

Reva, who also works as an opera librettist, went ahead and experimented with the traditional structure of a novel, and both her editors and agent “were all on board, fortunately, with the structural play of the novel and what it turned into.

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“I think I was actually the one who was more squeamish about it, because when I was drafting it, I had actually taken out the metafictional elements at first, because I thought, ‘Nah, no one’s gonna gonna sit with me for this. It’s too much.’ So I had actually taken it out, but then I realized I’d missed those elements, and I put them back in.”

Stuck to her laptop as she was writing Endling was a Post-It note with a quote from author Zsuzsi Gartner: “I’d rather go down in flames, quite frankly, than have a nice little book. You can quote me on that.”

“Once I realized that I would rather write a book that is trying something new, I’d rather do that and fail than write a neat little story,” Reva decided. “That’s when I just went for it.”

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Reva said she really just wanted to finish the book and wasn’t sure what the reaction would be to it.

“It was just such a difficult book to write,” Reva said. “Then it becomes so personal, and I wasn’t sure how to write that, and it just really took me through the ringer.”

When Endling finally came out, to her horror she discovered that another book had been published in Germany with the same title and also revolved around endangered snails.

Like Reva, author Jasmin Schreiber was inspired to write her Endling after reading an article written by Ed Yong that appeared in The Atlantic.

“I love that Jasmin and I are in touch, and that we both had this same reaction to the same article about this snail and the immense mental toll it takes to take care of an endling. It’s nice to see readers reacting to the snails in our books as well.”

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Reva went on a promotional tour in the U.S. back in June and her first stop was New York City, where she appeared as a guest on Seth Meyers’ late-night talk show. Next was Nashville, where she signed 1,700 copies of Endling for author and bookstore owner Ann Patchett’s book club. Then it was off to Austin, Texas, and other stops for literary salons.

“I just loved engaging with readers that way,” she said.

Endling made the Booker Prize longlist in July.

“I got a text message from my editor saying they had some news and they wanted to talk to me over the phone,” she recalled of how she heard about the nomination. “I had some inkling, but I didn’t want to bear hope. But it was just wonderful news, and a huge, huge honour.”

Her book promotional tour continues with Sunday’s stop in Kingston as well as one in Toronto.

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“It always takes a little while to figure out how to talk about a book, no matter which one it is. I’m happy to talk about the book, though, because I’ve spent so long in isolation with it,” said Reva, whose work as an opera librettist “offsets the isolation of fiction writing.”

“I’ve been working on it since 2018, so it’s nice to then get to engage with people about it.”

Maria Reva will join fellow author Ian Williams at Kingston WritersFest for an event titled “Wild Rides.” It takes place Sunday at the Marriott Hotel from 1:30 to 3 p.m.

“He does some very interesting structural play in his his novel as well,” Reva said, “so I’m really looking forward to that event.”

Go to kingstonwritersfest.ca for a full schedule and advance tickets.

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In addition to her Booker Prize nomination, it was announced Wednesday that Reva is one of the finalists for this year’s Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, which comes with a $70,000 prize.

Also nominated was Kingston’s own Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek, and her debut novel, We, the Kindling. Okot Bitek’s compelling book, about Ugandan schoolgirls who survived abduction by the Lord’s Resistance Army back in the 1990s, also made the longlist for this year’s Giller Prize.

Like Reva, Okot Bitek will be a featured guest at this weekend’s Kingston WritersFest. She’ll be in conversation with author/organizer Merilyn Simonds Friday morning from 10 to 11:30 at the Limestone City Ballroom at the Kingston Marriott.

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The Isabel Bader Centre’s season continues Friday evening with a performance by the Tom Wilson Tehohahake Trio at 7:30 p.m. ($40, $50).

Wilson, known for playing in bands Junkhouse, Lee Harvey Osmond and Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, will stick around and give a free artist talk Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock (also in the performance hall) about his art installation, Fading Memories of Home.

Kahnawake Mohawk by birth, Wilson’s installation looks at “the systemic erasure of Indigenous culture resulting from the residential school system.”

The installation is currently set up in the Isabel’s Art and Media Lab and will remain there until the end of the month.

The Grand Theatre’s season, meanwhile, hasn’t started yet, but there are a couple of popular shows happening there this week.

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First up is Thursday night’s The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, a live show based on the long-running TV comedy. The actors are different, of course, but the characters remain the same.

The 7:30 p.m. performance sold out, so they added a second show at 2 p.m. There were a few tickets ($45.32) left for the matinee as of press time.

Another sold-out show is Rick Mercer’s “Stand-up for Canada” on Tuesday. It starts at 7:30 and features comedians Sophie Buddle, Mayce Galoni and Julie Kim.

Kingston band Celtic Kitchen Party performed on the Grand Theatre stage six months ago to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

On Friday, they’ll be a few blocks away, at the Spire, to celebrate “Halfway to St. Patrick’s Day.” The band will be joined by the Kingston Capital Men’s Chorus and the McGrath School of Dance during Friday’s performance. It starts at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $30.45.

And the Broom Factory continues to be the go-to for touring indie bands.

On Friday, Juno award winners the Dirty Nil will be performing an all-ages show at 7:30. Opening will be Heart Attack Man and Spite House. Tickets are $30.

On Sunday evening at 7:30, Brooks & Bowskill will be at the Broom with their band. Tickets for that performance are $32.02 a pop.

phendra@postmedia.com

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Entertaining: Author longlisted for Booker Prize coming to Kingston

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