Join the Cranbrook History Centre for an exclusive reading with 2022 Giller Prize Winner, Suzette Mayr, and her newest award-winning book The Sleeping Car Porter. The historic Argyle Dining Car, the real-life setting of the fictional novel, provides an intimate setting for this half-hour reading, moderated question period and meet & greet with the author.

What people are saying about The Sleeping Car Porter

“I couldn’t help imagining what a film Wes Anderson might make of Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter. The novel’s main character is a gay Black porter riding the rails in 1920’s Canada, coping with a horde of difficult long-haul passengers, including a child who appears to have permanently attached herself to his leg. Terrified that a breach of one of the railway’s insanely restrictive rules will get him fired before he can save enough money for dental school, he amuses himself―and keeps awake on his grueling shifts―by imagining the medical horrors that lie behind the smiles (or grimaces) of his clientele.” – The New York Times

“Mayr’s prose is vivid but never overwrought, capturing the surrealism of intense fatigue in constant motion … Readers will be captivated.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Suzette Mayr brings to life –believably, achingly, thrillingly –a whole world contained in a passenger train moving across the Canadian vastness, nearly one hundred years ago. As only occurs in the finest historical novels, every page in The Sleeping Car Porter feels alive and immediate –and eerily contemporary. The sleeping car porter in this sleek, stylish novel is named R.T. Baxter –called George by the people upon whom he waits, as is every other Black porter. Baxter’s dream of one day going to school to learn dentistry coexists with his secret life as a gay man, and in Mayr’s triumphant novel we follow him not only from Montreal to Calgary, but into and out of the lives of an indelibly etched cast of supporting characters, and, finally, into a beautifully rendered radiance.” – 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury

Awards

WINNER OF THE 2022 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 20 LITERARY FICTION BOOKS OF 2022

THE GLOBE 100: THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022

CBC BOOKS: THE BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2022

Tickets: $40.00 + GST

Ticket includes the exclusive reading, a copy of The Sleeping Car Porter, and refreshments. *Limited tickets available*

*Your included copy of The Sleeping Car Porter can be picked up in advance from Huckleberry Books*  Please present your email ticket confirmation to Huckleberry staff on pick-up

*Sold Out*

*All proceeds of this fundraising event will support future programming at the Museum

About the Author

Suzette Mayr is the author of six novels including her most recent, The Sleeping Car Porter, which won the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Award. Her other novels have won the ReLit Award and City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, and been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean Region, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Best First Book and Best Novel Awards, and the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction. Mayr has also published articles in the peer-reviewed journals Horror Studies, Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, The Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, and in Antipodes. She is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary where she teaches fiction-writing.