MacEwan University is proud to announce that the MacEwan Book of the Year 2024/25 is Girlfriend on Mars, by Calgary-based author Deborah Willis. This is the author’s debut novel and was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was one of Scientific American’s Best Staff Reads of 2023. Willis was MacEwan’s Writer in Residence in 2017.
“Book of the Year is an institution at MacEwan,” says Dr. Craig Monk, provost and vice-president, Academic. “A single text inspires a range of faculty to engage with it in various ways, giving students unique opportunities to bring diverse classroom perspectives to bear in reading, interpreting and reimagining its ideas. I look forward to seeing how Girlfriend on Mars challenges and unites our campus this year.”
The MacEwan Book of the Year is an annual celebration of one work of Canadian literature that is taught in coursework across multiple disciplines. The program also features several campus events, including classroom visits from the author, a public reading and a student contest.
“MacEwan Book of the Year has always been about creating community both on and off campus through the shared experience of collectively reading and celebrating a book by a Canadian author,” says Jacqueline Baker, associate professor, Department of English. “We’re so delighted that Deborah Willis will be joining us on campus this spring for class visits and a public reading and discussion of her funny, tender, completely of-the-moment novel, Girlfriend on Mars.”
The Book of the Year is chosen annually by a committee of faculty, staff and students, from suggestions brought forward by the MacEwan community.
About the novel
Amber Kivinen is moving to Mars. Or at least, she will be if she wins a chance to join MarsNow. She and 23 reality TV contestants from around the world – an assortment of science nerds and wannabe influencers – are competing for two seats on the first human-led mission to Mars, sponsored by billionaire Geoff Task. Meanwhile Kevin, Amber’s boyfriend of fourteen years, was content going nowhere until Amber left him – and their hydroponic weed business – behind. As he tends to the plants growing in their absurdly overpriced Vancouver basement apartment, Kevin tunes in to find out why the love of his life is so determined to leave the planet with somebody else.
An audaciously original debut from a writer that Emily St. John Mandel dubbed “immensely talented,” Girlfriend on Mars is at once a satirical indictment of our pursuit of fame and wealth amidst environmental crisis, and an exploration of humanity’s deepest longing, greatest quest and most enduring cliché: love.
Watch for news about upcoming events and learn more about past Books of the Year at MacEwan.ca/MacEwanBook.