There is no simple answer for what it means to be Canadian. There are a thousand answers that come together. But part of that is that there is a national mythology.

My children have stolen my dreams in a very literal sense. I've lost months in the minutes and hours that Sabine and Zoey have needed me at night, their thin, butterfly-beating hearts pushed against me in the darkness.

Growing up in Waterloo, the Governor General's Award wasn't something I even thought to wish for.

To map the Governor General's Award is to map both the past and the future of Canadian literature, and to be nominated for my first book is wonderful.

Ezekiel Boone's books, starting with 'The Hatching' series, are meant to be big, sprawling, smart, entertaining books that are fun above all else; the literary novels written under my real name, Alexi Zentner, are certainly a little more quiet.

I'm absolutely terrified of spiders.