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CBC announces Canada Reads finalists, panellists, and host

The 2017 Canada Reads panellists: Tamara Taylor, Jody Mitic, Candy Palmater, Humble The Poet, and Chantal Kreviazuk (CBC Books)

The 2017 Canada Reads panellists (CBC Books)

CBC Books has revealed the finalists for this year’s instalment of Canada Reads, an annual competition during which five public personalities each defend a Canadian book from the previous year, with the aim to prove their title is the best based on a particular theme. The 2017 theme is “What is the one book Canadians need now?”

  • Singer/songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk will defend environmental and human rights activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to Be Cold: One Woman’s Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet (Penguin Canada).
  • Spoken-word artist Humble The Poet will champion André Alexis’s award-winning novel, Fifteen Dogs (Coach House Books).
  • Bones actor Tamara Taylor will advocate for Company Town (Tor Books), the latest novel by Toronto-based futurist and science-fiction writer Madeline Ashby.
  • Comedian and broadcaster Candy Palmater will defend Katherena Vermette’s debut novel, The Break (House of Anansi Press).
  • Veteran, memoirist, Ottawa city councillor, and reality TV competitor Jody Mitic will endorse M.G. Vassanji’s latest novel, Nostalgia (Doubleday Canada).

The authors will participate in an event moderated by Indigo CEO Heather Reisman at the bookseller’s Bay St. & Bloor St. location on Jan. 31.

The debate series, hosted by comedian and CBC Radio’s Laugh Out Loud host Ali Hassan, will air March 27–30 on CBC and CBC Radio One, and will be livestreamed on CBCBooks.ca.