Power Q & A with Allister Thompson
Q: Why was it important to you to set your YA novel, Birch & Jay (Latitude 46 Publishing) in northern Ontario?
A: There were a few reasons for the setting being important. First, I live here. I know intimately the beauty of the northern wilderness and what it has to offer the imagination and the soul. Like a lot of people, when I moved here, I was amazed at the sheer scope of a sparsely populated landscape, as well as its natural beauty, and it really captivated me. It still does. I wanted to share that feeling. Second, given that fact, I felt that while there is a great body of literature about northern Ontario, there can always be room for more! And in this particular genre (speculative fiction/post-apocalyptic), I felt I could do something unique in this setting that no one has done before. Lastly, it was important to my process because my knowledge of this area, all the way down to Toronto, really enabled me to accurately describe and bring to life the settings in vivid ways.
Birch & Jay by Allister Thompson, published by Latitude 46, spring 2025.
More about Birch & Jay:
Decades after the world was levelled by the effects of human-made climate change, the scattered remnants of humanity have begun to pull themselves together. Birch and Jay are a young couple living in a small, idyllic community away from the ruins of one of Canada’s great cities.
As a newly graduated Knowledge Seeker, Jay must leave Birch and their community to collect remnants of old wisdom from the dead world. Along the way, he comes across a mysterious elderly woman who offers to travel with him. He will receive more than a travel companion — she offers revelations about their town’s founding as well as knowledge of how to survive in a lawless world.
Birch, seeking adventure, pursues Jay but finds more danger than she ever imagined. Will they find each other in the chaos and brutality of the city and get safely back home to tell the tale?
Author Allister Thompson
About Allister Thompson:
Allister Thompson was born in the UK and spent his childhood in Mississauga, Ontario, where he got his first part-time job in a small bookstore at the mall at age sixteen. He has spent the rest of his life working in the publishing and bookselling industries. He worked for small and mid-sized publishers in Toronto for fifteen years before striking out on his own as a freelance editor. This freedom eventually led him to North Bay, Ontario, where he has lived and worked with dozens of authors for the past ten years.