Best Kind of People

Zoe Whittall is the author of The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life (2001), The Emily Valentine Poems (2006), and Precordial Thump (2008), and the editor of Geeks, Misfits, & Outlaws (2003). Her debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts (2007) made the Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of the Year and CBC Canada Reads' Top Ten Essential Novels of the Decade. Her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible (2009) won a Lambda Literary Award and was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. Her writing has appeared in the Walrus, the Believer, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Fashion, and more. She has also worked as a writer and story editor on the TV shows Degrassi and Schitt's Creek. Born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, she has an MFA from the University of Guelph and lives in Toronto.

Whittall places the reader right at the centre of their pain. It's the best depiction of female suffering I've read since Jane Smiley eloquently tackled sexual abuse in A Thousand Acres. - Toronto StarThe Best Kind of People is the best kind of book ? it's got a compelling story characters readers will recognize and come to love and writing that makes it effortless to turn page after page. - Vancouver SunAn astounding portrait of a character by omission. - National PostThe jury found Zoe Whittall's The Best Kind of People urgent and timely, nuanced and brave. This gripping story challenges how we hear women and girls, and dissects the self-hypnosis and fear that prevent us from speaking disruptive truth. - 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury