CBC has revealed the panelists and the titles they will respectively champion in this year’s Canada Reads debates, to discern “the one book to break barriers.”

The list is as follows:

• Toronto International Film Festival artistic director Cameron Bailey will defend the novel Ru by Kim Thúy, Sheila Fischman, trans. (Random House Canada)
• Actress Kristin Kreuk will defend Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes by Kamal Al-Solaylee (HarperCollins Canada)
• Activist-entrepreneur Craig Kielburger will defend the non-fiction title The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King (Doubleday Canada)
• Broadcaster Elaine Lui will defend the YA novel When Everything Feels like the Movies by Raziel Reid (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• Singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright will defend the novel And the Birds Rained Down by Jocelyne Saucier; Rhonda Mullins, trans. (Coach House Books)

This is the first time the competition has included a YA novel, and the first time both fiction and non-fiction titles are in contention.

The debates will be held in front of a live audience March 16-19 with host Wab Kinew.