Jade Wallace (MA 2021), recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal for academic excellence at the graduate level, has partnered with Palimpsest Press to publish the novel, Anomia. The work is one Wallace, who uses they-them pronouns, wrote and defended as their creative writing thesis in September 2021.

Wallace says the inspiration for the novel started several years prior, as they became fixated on the possibility of writing an entire book free of the constraints of sex or gender.

After completing their thesis in 2021 and continuing with revisions and edits, Wallace saw the work picked up by Windsor-based publisher Palimpsest Press in 2023.

“For me,” says Wallace, “Anomia represents not only an artistic endeavour, but also an act of wish fulfillment. In daily life, we constantly negotiate the fraught dynamics of sex and gender identity, but in the world of Anomia, we are given a glimpse of another life. I am not yet sure whether the novel represents a possible or an impossible world. It is no accident that the title Anomia resonates, ever so faintly, like Utopia.”

Wallace’s book will be released officially June 15, and is currently available for pre-order on the Palimpsest Press website. Wallace will also be present as a special guest with How You Were Born author Kat Cayley during a public event at Biblioasis bookstore, 1520 Wyandotte St. East, Thursday, April 25, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Biblioasis will host a local launch, reading, and signing of Anomia on July 7.