Paige Lewis, "Canon" (Viking, 2026)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network — Paige Lewis, "Canon" (Viking, 2026)

Host: Chris Holmes
Guest: Paige Lewis
Date: May 19, 2026
Episode Page

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Overview

In this rich and lively episode of Burned by Books on the New Books Network, host Chris Holmes interviews poet and author Paige Lewis about their debut novel, Canon. This conversation traverses the genesis, structure, and thematic complexity of the new novel, touching on its inventive approach to epic form, humor, violence, references (both classical and modern), the role of gender and identity, the function of narration, and the ethical and ecological questions at the book’s core. Their discussion is as thoughtful as it is humorous, mirroring the style and thematic ambitions of Canon itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Novel’s Unusual Epic: Blending Antiquity and Now

• Canon is introduced as a novel that feels both like a “religious text...swallowed up by a classic epic and ejected into a very contemporary moment” (00:01–03:17).

• Chris Holmes emphasizes its inventive mixture: “An affect that feels both antiquitous and modern, religious and secular, and epic and vulgar.”

  • Quote (07:08, Chris Holmes):
    “I spent the novel feeling like I was reading an epic religious tale while being shown a mirror to our very contemporary moment.”

• Paige Lewis describes how the God character is drawn as a hybrid—not the Abrahamic God of their mother’s faith, but more like a “Greek God...flawed, silly, or very angry for a reason we don’t understand” (08:21).

  • Writing with “no one watching” lowered the pressure and allowed more risk, humor, and blending of forms (10:25–11:23).

2. Epic References: Obsessions and Intertexts

• The novel is densely packed with references to epic and religious texts and figures: “Rosy Fingered dawn,” Helen of Troy, Enkidu, Jonah and the Whale, Odysseus, and Jacques Cousteau (12:30–14:57).
• Lewis’s approach:
  • Draws on their own obsessions with epic poetry (“I was pulling from those notebooks...I can sit down with an epic and I don’t get up until it’s done,” 13:35).
• On criticisms of excessive references (Goodreads review):
  • Quote (15:05, Lewis):
    “It makes me think of, like, reading something like Ulysses and being, like, too many references. Not that I’m comparing canon to Ulysses...”

3. Narrative Voice: The Wry and Hilarious Oracle

• The narrator is described as a powerful, ironic, and sometimes controlling presence, often breaking the fourth wall to comment on story, characters, and readers alike (17:11–20:14).
• Paige sees the narrator as a kind of god—“more in control than anyone else in the book, yet still can’t control everything” (17:46).
• Snarky chapter titles and interruptions reflect both resistance to narrative conventions and a playfulness with form.
• When the narrator forbids explicit violence, Holmes remarks on it as a moral and ethical gesture (20:14):
  • Quote (20:45, Holmes):
    “Some of the most profound moments...were the narrator basically exposing a reader’s desire for explicitness, like, you want to look at the body and its dismemberment, and we’re not gonna do that.”

4. Violence, Ethics, and Authorial Self-Interrogation

• Lewis expresses discomfort with violence in literature/film, and discusses how the book’s narrator sometimes “scolds” the reader and the author for enabling suffering (20:45–23:31).
• Violence in Canon is rooted in emotional and realistic pain (loss, abandonment, harm to animals) rather than spectacle.

5. Character Creation and Biblical Roots

• Yara and Adrina, the novel’s dual heroes, emerge from figures in the Book of Judges—reimagined and expanded for new narrative possibilities (26:10–29:17).
• Making Yara non-binary transformed both the character and the story, opening new emotional resonances and creative energy (28:25).

6. Comedy as Craft and Camouflage

• Holmes lauds the book’s unique humor, from lines like “God judging a bodybuilding competition because most of the world lacked definition but fear,” to a reincarnated Jacques Cousteau whale named How Big! (30:40).
• Lewis discusses comedic instinct and references Richard Pryor’s dictum:
  • Quote (32:49, Richard Pryor via Lewis):
    “He likes to get the audience laughing so that their mouths are open when he pours the poison in.”
• Humor is used as a strategy to invite readers into engaging with difficult truths—“here’s the funny moment, but also here’s a lot of death and ecological collapse” (33:56–34:54).
• Inspiration from The Simpsons for referential humor and multi-layered jokes (34:55).

7. Environmental Grief and Animal Lives

• The animals in Canon, especially How Big! the whale and Newt the newt, reflect the real grief Lewis feels about ecological harm (35:01–41:10).
• Animal suffering is treated with intimacy and care—Lewis recounts personal stories of saving bugs at school and following news of environmental disasters:
  • Quote (38:08, Lewis):
    “It can be really paralyzing to just try to hold on to all of the harms that humans are causing to animals at any given moment.”
• The book tries to balance truthfulness about harm with hope, showing real disruption but also the importance of caring and action, however small.

8. Non-Binary Identity: Form, Genre, and Character

• Making Yara non-binary led to revelations in both characterization and the novel’s structure; Holmes notes the formal parallel between Yara’s identity and the novel’s refusal to fit into a single genre: “Is it an epic, a religious canon, until it blasphemes, a hero story until the nature of heroism comes into question?” (42:15).
• Lewis:
  • Quote (44:12, Lewis):
    “There aren’t really binaries when it comes to what a book can be or what a human can be. And so it just made sense to me...to have that sort of subtitle be that it’s a non-binary epic.”

9. Reading Recommendations from Paige Lewis (44:37–46:49)

• Babylon, South Dakota by Tom Lynn — “Such an interesting story...a dog in it that can’t die—my kind of story” (45:39). (Releases May 26)
• We by Laylee Long Soldier — A highly-anticipated poetry book coming in October, following up on her acclaimed debut “Whereas”; it reflects on Covid and much more.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On God’s Personality:
  “He does not act as the sort of, like, Abrahamic God would behave. He acts more like a sort of Greek God in that he has flaws and he can be silly or very, very angry for a reason we don’t understand.”
  — Paige Lewis (08:21)

• On Epic Obsessions:
  “I teach creative writing...and I often ask my students early on what they are obsessed with...even if they don’t want to write about those obsessions, the obsessions are going to come through eventually.”
  — Paige Lewis (12:55)

• On Humor and Purpose:
  “Richard Pryor...likes to get the audience laughing so that their mouths are open when he pours the poison in. I feel I need to almost trick the reader into engaging with [difficult subjects].”
  — Paige Lewis (32:49)

• On Non-Binary Epic:
  “There aren’t really binaries when it comes to what a book can be or what a human can be. And so it just made sense...to have that sort of subtitle: a non-binary epic.”
  — Paige Lewis (44:12)

• On Environmental Grief:
  “It can be really paralyzing to just try to hold on to all of the harms that humans are causing to animals at any given moment.”
  — Paige Lewis (38:08)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:01 — Intro and book summary by Chris Holmes
• 03:49 — (Reading) Paige Lewis reads an early passage introducing Yara and God
• 07:02 — Discussion on balancing ancient/modern, religious/secular tones
• 12:30 — How epic references/intertexts factored into writing Canon
• 17:11 — The narrator’s function and chapter titles
• 20:14 — The ethical/moral stance on violence within the book
• 26:09 — Yara, Adrina, and their biblical origins
• 30:40 — The role of comedy and humor in Canon
• 35:01 — Ecological themes, animal characters, and environmental grief
• 42:15 — Yara’s non-binary identity and its connection to genre/form
• 44:37 — Paige’s book recommendations

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Tone & Atmosphere

The conversation is warm, funny, incisive, and intellectually vibrant—mirroring the qualities of Canon itself. Paige Lewis is self-effacing and candid about their process, obsessions, and concerns, while Chris Holmes offers deep, appreciative readings and questions.

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Useful For

Listeners who haven’t read Canon will come away with a sharp sense of its inventiveness, humor, ethical seriousness, and its unique blend of literary traditions. Writers, teachers, and anyone interested in experimental genre, contemporary epic retellings, or the intersection of identity, ethics, and story will find much to savor here.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Chris Holmes and this is Burned by Books. Here you'll find interviews with writers you already love, like Jennifer Egan and Rebecca Mackay, mixed in with up and coming voices like Alexandra Kleeman and Roman Alam. You'll find us wherever you listen to podcasts, but check out previous [e-mail] and on Instagram and Twitter BurnedByBooks. Let's start the show When Yara finds themselves in conversation with God about a particular hit job he would like them to undertake, this will not be nearly the weirdest thing that will happen to them in the journey that will follow this somewhat unwilling anointment. Adrina, on the other hand, cannot abide waiting for God's choosing and so elects herself as prophet and hand of God, rushing to strike down Dominic, the leader of a quite badly behaved army. Fate and force will bring these two on a collision course that looks to detonate at Dominic's feet. In Canon, the much anticipated debut novel of poet Paul Paige Lewis, Cannon reads like a religious text that has been swallowed up by a classic epic and then ejected into a very contemporary moment with all the light and force of something new and untethered from tradition or obligation. Yara can ride to Dominic's castle with a whale that has a seat atop his back as long as they don't mind applying sunscreen. And Adrina will have to convince Harpo, leader of the putative good Guys, that she is the main character of this hero story. With intertexts enough to fill a library page, Lewis's Hero's Journey picks and chooses which tropes and recognizable figures best serve the weight and sometimes ridiculousness of canon's dual hero odyssey. Jonah's wail is cast aside while we wave at a departing Helen of Troy, and Jacques Cousteau makes a rebirthed appearance. And that doesn't begin to capture the carnival esque array of classical and modern figures, none of whom gets to fully occupy the stage as room is required for Cannon's upstart heroes. Innovative at every level of form and function, reading canon is like turning the history of the contemporary novel upside down to shake out the cobwebs and prepare ourselves for the funniest oracle voiced narrator since Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Paige Lewis is the author of the poetry collection Spacestruck and the novel Canon. They co edited Another Last Call, Poems on Addiction and Deliverance with Kaveh Akbar. Paige teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. Welcome to Burned by Books. Paige Lewis hello.

[B]

Thank you for having Me. That was such a nice description of the book.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

I would like it to be transcribed so that I can just bring that with me when I have to do readings of it.

[A]

Well, you're very kind because it was really hard to sum it up because it's a. It's a. It's epic in all the senses of that term. I just took such great joy from this book and we'll talk about the. All the reasons why. But in order to just have any sense of what is going on in the form and function of canon, I would love for you to just start by reading a section when Yara has been told by God that they need to fight Dominic, a much maligned warrior.

[C]

Yeah, of course.

[B]

So that happens super early on in the book because we gotta just hit the ground running. And so in the previous section, God has asked Yara to fight a bad guy. And the next section starts with the title.

[C]

What? What? Yara asked. Under his breath, God reminded himself to be crystal clear. Humans didn't respond well to oracular vague declarations. Eve ate poison. Samson stopped working out. Abraham just about cut his son's fucking head off. God wanted to say nothing nods to

[B]

nothing, grave to grave.

[C]

But what would that mean to this 18 year old? Humans, especially young ones, need utmost clarity. Okay, Yara, here's the deal. There's this bad guy. Well, there are a lot of bad guys.

[B]

But you only need to help me with one.

[C]

His name is Dominic. And I can tell by the way you stopped breathing that you recognize the name. Take a breath, Yara. Yara breathed. Dominic. The general who burned the Sibylline's books? That's the one. Dominic who felled the sacred tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he only tips waitresses 8%. Listen, I need Dominic defeated like yesterday. And you're just the woman I need to take him down.

[B]

But I'm not a woman.

[C]

Yara spoke as if offering an apology. Though part of them hoped the revelation would disqualify them from carrying out God's mission. It sounded like a huge disruption to their daily routine. And their routine was paramount.

[B]

Close enough.

[C]

God thought Dominic would still be humiliated. He decided not to say this out loud. What did he say instead? Sometimes even divine plans need tweaking. I have chosen you, Yara. And I stand by this choice. If you accept your mission, you will soon travel across the known world facing challenges meant to prepare you for your ultimate purpose. Clarity. Clarity.

[B]

God thought. What I mean is, by the end

[C]

of your journey, you will have the physical and mental Strength to.

[B]

To do what no other human can do.

[C]

By the end of this journey, you will be able to take Dominic's life. God's voice crumpled silence into a ball. There was a sudden blur to everything, and Yara was certain that to speak again would be a grave mistake. Yet they spoke. Will I survive? Careless is the ant who takes its eyes off the path to examine the size of its burden.

[B]

God proclaimed.

[C]

It wasn't his best quote. He preferred his whole the wolf shall dwell with the lamb bit. But he was still proud and made a mental note to repeat it. God moved closer to Yara and placed his hand on their head. Yara didn't like this. Sure, God was God, but he was also man adjacent. And his touch felt like any other man's touch, filthy. It is time to decide.

[B]

Will you fight for me?

[C]

God asked, his filthy hand still heavy on Yara's skull.

[A]

Thank you so much. It was so great to hear it in your voice. I had to mute myself to keep from laughing at my favorite lines, which included. It wasn't his best quote. He preferred his whole the wolf shall dwell with the lamb bit. But he was still proud, which I thought was just an amazing turn there. And, you know, for me, one of the most appealing things about canon is that you. You managed quite a magic trick in which you have a affect that feels both antiquitous and modern, religious and secular and epic and vulgar. And I spent the novel feeling like I was reading an epic religious tale while being shown a mirror to our very contemporary moment. How did you manage that kind of balance in. In bringing forth and producing that. That. The affect of that feeling?

[B]

That's a good question and not one

[C]

that I know that I can answer

[B]

because I'm still trying to figure out how if it is working and I oh, it's working. I'm glad it's working for you. I think that part of the. Part of the thing with the sort of. I mean, the whole God bit, right, like the sort of.

[A]

The. The God bit of God.

[B]

And also the fact that he does not act as the sort of, like Abrahamic God would behave. And he acts more like a sort of Greek God in that he has flaws and he gets like, he can be silly or he can be very, very angry for a reason we don't understand. And I didn't want to necessarily be making fun of the God that my mother believes in, if that makes sense. And so I feel like he is very much a different character than that God. And that made it a little bit Easier for me to. To have fun with this sort of. This sort of being that is trying to move all of these chess pieces at once. Um, and it just made it more fun to try to shove Greek God, like, being into a world that I remember growing up in. And so I don't know if that answers your question at all.

[A]

It does, very much. I. I mean, were you worried? I mean, I guess you were a little bit, but were you worried about feeling blasphemous?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Yeah. You were. Okay. How did you take the. Cause I do feel. I. I mean, this particular God of canon does feel like a, you know, a. A God, a classical God, but it also, you know, feels enough like an Abrahamic God, and then maybe also, you know, throw in a couple of. So is it helpful that it's a sort of melange of gods, and that kind of gets you a little bit off the hook? And. And what does it. What does it mean to kind of have a God who's, like, deeply imperfect in a way that could offend some people?

[B]

Yeah. I think that when I first started writing it, I was writing it as an epic poem, and God showed up really, really quickly in that. In that poem and was as flawed as he is in the book. And for a little while, I was

[C]

writing it without expecting to show it

[B]

to anyone I didn't like. I showed my husband the first few sections and then didn't show anyone, including him, for the next several years.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

So part of me was like, okay, cool. So I can do what I want in this. In this book, because no one's gonna see it. So no one can get upset with me or want to sort of find me and yell at me or anything like that. And so I think that that helped a lot with releasing some of that pressure and to sort of dissuade that fear for me. And then when I ultimately did show it to a few readers, I definitely picked readers that weren't easily offended. But from what I heard from them, it didn't seem like it was too outrageous or something that would upset someone like my mother.

[A]

It's always good not to upset one's mother.

[B]

I know. That's the big thing about. Right. You're like, okay, I gotta write this thing, but if my mom reads it, they'll like me.

[A]

And moms always read it.

[B]

It's like, it's impossible for them not to read it.

[A]

Yep. And as you were talking about this, I was thinking about, you know, also having you having to balance so many kind of references both Explicit and, and, you know, much more subtle to all these different epic and religious traditions. And so we've got Rosy Fingered dawn, you know, coming in there, and references to Helen of Troy and Enkidu, which we don't often see in contemporary literature. And you know, Jonah and the Whale, Odysseus is Sirens. I could go on and on. How do you, how did you decide what you wanted there? Was it a question of things that you loved or things that you wanted to take on? And how did you make it all live within this world?

[B]

Yeah, I, I often. So I teach creative writing classes and I often ask my students early on what they are obsessed with. And they have such weird obsessions, which is great, but it's sort of to get them thinking about the fact that like, even if they don't want to write about those obsessions, the obsessions are going to come through eventually in the work. I love that.

[A]

I've never heard that expressed that way before, but I think it's so true.

[B]

It's so hard to not like to stop it. And so I have for a long time now been really obsessed with epic poems. I just find them very fun to read and there's a sense of clarity to the narrative often that just keeps me feeling calm. Like it doesn't feel like I have to reach too far to understand what is happening. And so I spend a lot of time reading as many epics as I could find. And being a writer, I would often highlight or like write down certain images from those epics or quotes from those epics. And at first I didn't know what I was necessarily going to do with those. I just would want them on hand in case I needed to pull from them for like a poem I was writing. And so it ended up being really useful when writing canon because I had had so much time and energy spent on these epics. My husband likes to tell people that I can like sit down with an epic and then I don't get up until it's done, which isn't true. I definitely get up because I would have to pee, right, like, and it's need to like drink water. But so I, I think that I was pulling from those notebooks. And then when I was really in the weeds of canon, what I was reading when I wasn't writing was more epics. And so it was really easy for me to pull things that to me felt like they fit in the, the narrative of canon. And sometimes maybe it works and sometimes it doesn't. I was told early on as A writer that if I, like, publish a book, never to check Goodreads. It was a really good. Is a really, Is really good advice. But then I definitely did you just broke it immediately. I definitely checked, and someone was like, too many references. And I was like, all right.

[A]

No, I, I, I stand against this fully. That seems like it was written by Dominic as a way back.

[B]

He's like, I can't believe that I was written like this. But it also, it makes me think of, like, reading something like Ulysses and being, like, too many references. Not that I'm comparing canon to Ulysses, but Ulysses is also an epic. And so, yeah, very much. And so it's just funny to think of, like, what other people's tastes are and what they expect from a book that they're picking up. And so I can't. I can't win them all.

[A]

Yeah, no, no. Definitely not. But I'm so glad that it follows the. The Ulysses. The Ulysses path, and it's many, many references. Have you read Maria Zukola's book Helen of Troy, 1997?

[B]

Yes. Yes. It's so good. Yeah, I wrote a blurb for it.

[A]

Oh, you did? Oh, amazing. Oh, great.

[B]

It was so thrilling to read that. And I remember exactly where it was when I was reading it, and just, like, I was like, damn it. Someone's already doing this very cool thing that I would love to also do. But the story is just so different in that book. So wonderful.

[A]

Yeah. She was on the show and a great interview and also came to our literary festival, and she, she was fabulous. And she just. I think the two of you need to, like, be fast friends because your shared obsession with epic things is, Is. Yeah. You'll have a lot to talk about.

[B]

Well, and just, like, moving them into the, the, like, contemporary, like, the here and now. Or at least into the 90s.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Which is what, in my mind is the best time. The 90s were fake.

[A]

least better than now. But that's a low. That's a low bar.

[B]

No. Well, and it's just that thing of, like, you look back and you have that nostalgia, and I'm like, what do I have a nostalgia for? Like, walking through a Florida mall? Like, what. What is that? So it's just. That is the. That is, like, peak for me is 90s, because it's all I knew.

[A]

Our guide to this epic is a narrative voice that makes itself known in the chapter headings. The voice is wry and sarcastic, hilarious and blasphemous. Many times the voice is even a narrative accelerant. Telling the reader to keep up, keep things moving, and also to remind us of our own humanity, forbidding us from knowing and seeing everything of the violence in the story. How do you see the narrator as a character, A God voice? Something in between?

[B]

Hmm. Yeah. I think that I think about the narrator as a sort of God, or at least someone that is in. Is more in control than anyone else in the book. Yet they. They still can't control everything. But I. I hate titles. I hate writing titles. And so these are so great.

[A]

The chapter titles are. I have ha. Written next to so many of them is kind of embarrassing.

[B]

No, that's great. I'm glad that they're working. It's. It was something when I was just writing, like short, like one page poems. The worst part for me always was the title. And so I sort of challenged myself with this project. I was like, oh, if I hate writing titles, how. How will I do? Writing, like hundreds of titles for each very short section of this book. And so I think there's a little bit of snark that comes in from the voice of the narrator. That might be partly just me being frustrated with having to write titles and also my being frustrated with the expectations of what, like a plot or a through line is.

[A]

Ah, yeah.

[B]

And so I wanted to not necessarily cut corners, but to almost like relate to a reader. Like, sometimes I'm like, okay, I don't want to do this list anymore, so I'm going to move on. And that will be the title. And that lets us know that we're moving on from the previous section into something new. And partly because our narrator got bored and it just felt like a lot of fun to do that. And I also think that there is. I am someone who deeply would love control, and I don't have it because none of us have control. Everything feels very chaotic, especially right now. And so to have a narrator that could in some ways, like, have control over the God of the story even felt very cool and maybe a little blasphemous. And so it felt a little bit like it grounded me, especially because I've never worked on something this long before. And so having those moments of pause for the narrator to come through and maybe let us know something that we might be missing or to sort of question us and our need for violence

[A]

that I was gonna. I was gonna ask you, because some of the most profound moments for me in the book were the narrator basically exposing a reader's desire for explicitness. Like, you know, you want to look at the body and it's dismemberment, and we're not gonna do that. Um, and. And I wondered that there's a kind of moral and ethical capacity to the. To the voice. And I wonder if you'd talk a little bit about that.

[B]

Yeah. I think that part of that comes from my being frustrated with violence in other people's books or in movies. It's not something that I handle really well as a reader. And it's also. It's frustrating to think that this is what will win over a reader, what will keep a reader interested and continue reading. And so I think that part of the questioning the reader and sort of turning to face them and maybe scolding them a little bit is not only meant to scold the reader, but to scold me as the writer for putting us in the situation to begin with, because I'm still grappling with that, like, having the control as the author to put characters in situations that aren't necessarily great or.

[C]

Or.

[B]

Or safe, and then letting them figure their. Their way out of those situations. There's that really famous quote that I don't think is actually attributed to anyone. Like, people say it's like Mark Twain or. Or Nabokov, but it's just a kind of anonymous quote. But it's. To be like, a writer, you need to get your character up a tree, and then once he's there, to throw rocks at him.

[A]

That does sound like Twain to me. That sounds very Twain.

[B]

Yeah. And so, like, I. I don't think that I'm throwing rocks at my. At my characters while they're up a

[A]

tree, but I do think, well, Adrina can just sing them out of existence where they get to.

[B]

Yeah. And I think that the violence isn't. I think that the violence is realistic. Like, the pains are. The pain that the characters suffer is pain that, like, a reader would have reference for, like, loss of beloved or being abandoned by family members or, like, seeing an animal harmed. Right. I think that there's a way in which those are very real, realistic sufferings. And it would feel very unreal or fake even to allow characters to just go about their day and, like, nothing bad ever happens. And if there's a war involved, which there had to be, there's going to be a lot of violence, because that's how war works. I didn't enjoy having to come up with all of that violence, and I tried to get it over very quickly because I don't want to see it. And I really hoped that my reader wouldn't Want to see it. Which is part of why I kind of turned to them at that moment to scold them a little bit.

[A]

I mean, I felt you present in I, I, I don't like at all like, you know, morphing the author into characters, but I did feel you in the, that kind of multiple role played moment where Yara has to kill Dominic to satisfy God again and again and again. And her revulsion, their revulsion at it, their, their, you know, sense that it was doing something harmful to them as much as it was to, to Dominic, made me feel like I was getting a sense of you.

[B]

Yeah, well, and I hope that that didn't feel like it took you out of the work at all.

[A]

Oh, no, not at all. But I, you know, I, there are moments in any book where I feel resonant with the author and that was one where I was like, oh, there's a, there's a deep well here.

[B]

Right. Hopefully. And I think that like, it's impossible for me not to be a part of the narrator. I'd like to think of them as their own character. Right. And that there's a sort of muse giving us this epic tale. But I'm absolutely there and the things that I care about exist in the book and I'm sure that there are things I could care about but don't yet, that don't make it into the book. Right. Yeah, I have like, I have trouble with violence towards animals more than I do with people in like movies or in books. And so there's a few moments where I sort of question that as well. Like what they're a moment where all the horses seem to have names, but none of the soldiers do.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Me sort of scolding myself but allowing it to stay in the book and, and trying to sort of deal with what that means about like, my understanding of the world and what is worthy of like, safety and like who, who do I care about? And I'm still grappling with that, but I did want it to be in the book.

[A]

What is worthy of safety is a really nice way of putting that. Yara and Adrina are on a collision course to meet on a battlefield. One ordained by God, the other self ordained. Both flee traumas and uncertainties with Yara being the unwilling anointed and Adrenas seeking to step outside of her mother's prophetess shadow to be her own prophet of God, the God's word. How did these two become your heroes and what particular things do you love about each of them? And, and how do those sort of come together as their arcs meet?

[C]

Yeah, I.

[B]

So I. I cheated a little bit. And the original, like, the characters originated from a story in the Book of Judges in which God asks sort of citizen to kill a man, and she does it immediately, and then she. She does it in a really gruesome way and then disappears from the Bible, like, never really to be mentioned again. And I was struck by that in my, like, Bible as Literature class when I had to write an essay, I found that story, and I was like, that's ridiculous. And I just, like, had an obsession with that character, because how does one do that as just like a citizen? You're not a soldier. You have not been prepped for this. But just because God says to do this thing, you do it immediately, without question. Always felt very wild to me. And also I was kind of annoyed that there was no other story about this character. And so the. The story of Yara sort of came from that. And then it became like it morphed into its own story. But there was a prophet in the Book of Judges, the only woman prophet, I believe or no, the only woman judge, but she's also a prophet named Deborah, and she is on a journey to help a character win a war as well. And so I was just interested in these two characters, and they became their own beings as the story progressed. But that's where it sort of started. And so it was nice to have this background to sort of build on top of. And very early on in my writing it, I felt this sort of moment where I wasn't connected to the characters anymore. And my husband suggested to make Yara non binary because I was too close to the original character from the Bible. And it opened up this whole other world for me. And then it was, like, impossible to stop writing, which was great. But I originally was writing their. Like, I. I originally wrote Yara's Journey in most of its entirety before even starting on Adrena's Journey.

[A]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[B]

I know.

[A]

I would not have guessed that.

[B]

I mean, I definitely went back and. And did a lot of revisions over and over and over again, but I was just like, I gotta get this first journey out of the way. And then I was like, okay, but we can't just have, like, half of a book about one character and half of a book about the other. We're going to have to weave in their journeys. And so that took a very long time. And I like to chalk it up to this being my first novel. Like, I'm still learning how to do these things. But. But yeah, for a while it was just Yara.

[A]

Oh, that's fascinating. And I'm glad to know there the. The germ of each of the characters coming in. And that's not cheating. I think that's just. That's just finding fascinating characters and having them live. Live longer and different lives in your world.

[B]

Absolutely. I was like, they. They deserved to have a journey to. Even if they have to do this gruesome thing, I would like to see how they did it. Like how they came to become the person that could do that gruesome thing.

[A]

Despite the august intertexts that line the walls of canon, I would call this a comedy in the classical sense, a story about ordinary people, but in this case with a veneer of the extraordinary. And it is absolutely a comedy in the modern sense of a text that employs humor to reveal truths. I was so delighted and did so much laughing aloud when I read canon, and there's just not many books that. That make me do that because I've read so much that often. I'm not surprised by a kind of humor unless the voice is really distinct. And. And I think you've. You've done something amazing here with the humor. But, you know, some of my favorites are God judging a bodybuilding competition because, quote, most of the world lacked definition. But fear. That's such a great turn of phrase. The fact that our whale character was Jacques Cousteau in a former life. And it just, you know, I could go on and on until everyone would be bored of me talking about how much I. I found to be really funny in this.

[B]

No, I think you should just keep going that are funny. And then I'll make sure to, like, really hit hard on those. When I have to do readings, I'll

[A]

be like, well, there's a funny section you've got. You've got a lot to choose from for your readings, but I want to know how you found. I mean, as I. Honestly, to tell the truth, I have not read your poetry, so I don't know if you're a. A very funny poet, but I wonder how this comedic voice in your. In your writing emerged. And what do you see comedy as doing in canon?

[B]

Yeah, no, I can't really tell you if I'm a funny poet. It just seems like I'm not allowed to say if I'm funny or not. But I remember early on, like, very early on, because it was. My husband and I drove to New Orleans from Florida to do a reading that was like, for free. You know. And I remember reading at it, and then a guy came up to me afterwards, and he just, like, looked at me. He's like, you know, you're really funny, right? And he's like, but do you know? And I'm like, why?

[A]

And so how does one even answer that?

[B]

I know I was like, I can't really respond to that, but I. I hope that means you liked what I read. But it was. I don't know that it was ever, like, super intentional to become funny. When I first started writing, I think that, if anything, my earliest poems were attempts at, like. Like. Like there was an attempt of a punchline because I didn't understand how poetry worked. I was like, okay, well, I don't have that much room to do anything, so let's just, like, do a joke and see how that goes. And it didn't go well. And so then I realized I had to start reading a lot more poetry to understand how poetry worked. But there's this. And I've always. I mean, like, anyone. I love comedy and love comedians, but there's this amazing quote by the comedian Richard Pryor that my husband and I bring up all the time because he says that he likes to get the audience laughing so that their mouths are open when he pours the poison in.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Which is so good.

[A]

And I'm so good.

[C]

I would love it if I could

[B]

just, like, scratch his name off and be like, that's mine.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Richard Pryor's brilliance is often undersold. He just had so many things like that. I haven't heard that one, though. I love. I love it.

[B]

Isn't it good? And so I like to think of that. I mean, I got that quote way after starting to write, but I want to be like. That is the quote that started me on my writing journey. But I think that there's so much sad stuff or. Or hard stuff to talk about in my work, in my poetry, or in hopefully, canon, that I feel I need to almost trick the reader into engaging with it. And the trick that I know is humor so far, and maybe eventually I'll learn other tricks, but I feel like I do have to sort of get the readers to let their guard down so that I can, like, get the poison in.

[A]

Get the poison in. Yeah, that's.

[B]

Here's this funny, like, snarky moment, and also here's a lot of death and ecological collapse and. Gotta hold on to both of these things, but here's another joke. Sorry. And so, yeah, I think that it. I don't I think part of it came from just growing up watching the Simpsons and so just always being really interested in love that it's so good. And also, there's so much slapstick. Like, you can watch it as a kid and think it's really funny because someone got knocked over. And you can watch it as an adult, and you think it's funny because they are doing a weird reference to Glenn Gould. And now we think that's funny because you're an adult who likes Glenn Gould. And so I think that so much of, like, the. The use of, like, a lot of references and allusions and all of that almost certainly comes from being a big fan of. Of shows like the Simpsons or just comedians who really have to think about the space and time that they have to make an audience member think. And so.

[A]

Well, I. I like it even more thinking of it as Simpsons refracting. You know, you just brought up ecological collapse. And that makes me think of our whale, whose name wonderfully is how big, exclamation point. And they, along with Newt the truth revealing Newt, represent some of the animal life that lives powerfully in this story of human violence. And there are very upsetting scenes of islands of trash and. And trash literally affixed to. To how big's body. And. And so I was interested to hear you talk a little bit more about bringing in animal lives and giving them weight and importance in. In a moment within canon of ecological collapse.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's. I look really closely at animals. I. I'm sure I make them uncomfortable because I really just want to see them doing animal stuff in the wild. And sometimes I attribute, like, human characteristics to those things. Like, I've got this chipmunk that sits on my back patio in the morning, like, as the sun is rising, and he stares out toward the backyard. And I like to think of him believing that that yard is his, and, like, he's just kind of, like, surveying his. His kingdom. He does it every morning. I love it so much. And it's, like, one of my favorite things to wake up to.

[A]

I think that has to be true. Let's just say it is.

[B]

And so I think that I've just always been very, very. One of my, like, really early memories is being in, like, kindergarten, which I guess isn't that really. But every time we would have to go outside to run the track, I would end up finding, like, a bug in the middle of the track. And then I would just crouch down and. And put my hands around it so that no one would step on the bug. And so. And then I would be, like, the last one done with track. But it's just like, I. I want to be able to prevent harm from happening to animals, even as just one person. And sometimes that prevention could be a disruption to that animal's, like, life, or I might get it wrong. But I'm very, like. I feel like I have to at least try. And so it's also really hard to pay attention to, like, the loss of animal lives. Like, just. Even on the Internet, you see videos of, like, what the great garbage patch looks like, or all of the trash going through rivers or fertilizers that kill hundreds of thousands of fish because they ran into the water, the fertilizer did, not the fish. But, like, and it's. I remember it happened really recently over here in Iowa where there was like, a spill of. Of fertilizer and all of the, like, A.

[C]

A, like 700,000 fish at least died.

[B]

And then in the article I was reading, they're like, the turtles haven't surfaced from, like, hibernation yet, so we don't know what will happen to them. Oh, God. And that was so hard. Like, I was, like, already dealing with the fish, and then I have to think about, like, what it means to, like, wake up into death. And it's really hard for me to forget those things once I learn them. And it can be really, like, paralyzing to just try to hold on to all of the harms that humans are causing to animals at, like, any given moment. And I didn't want necessarily for canon to just to do the same thing, to, like, sort of keep people from getting out of bed, because it feels so.

[A]

Thank you for that.

[B]

Yeah. And so there are. I feel like there's a universe in which I wrote this without any animal being harmed at all, which wouldn't have felt real, or at least it wouldn't have accomplished what. I guess I don't know what I wanted to accomplish, but it wouldn't have felt true to the world of canon. And I think that. Yeah, I think that it's. It's something that I grapple with every day because it feels very, very difficult to be one person trying to do anything to prevent harm to animals. But I know that there are people that are. Are doing a lot of work. Like, there's the. The. Oh, what is it called? There's, like, a whole system set up now for blocking trash from running out of rivers into the ocean, which is really great. Right. And it started with one person wanting to figure out how to stop trash from getting into the ocean. And then they just like, built it up from there. And there are people that have, like, farms that they run just to keep, like pigs who have fallen off of, like, trucks headed for slaughter. And then they just take care of forever. Right. Like, just like rescues like that are so important for me as a person to see because I know that there's like a way to. To help, even if it's not like, stopping or reversing ecological collapse.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's a big. That's a big one.

[B]

It's really, it's really. It's. Again, it would just be impossible to do anything if we thought we had to do that all at once. But it is really helpful to see people that care. Um, and so I think that one thing about Yara is that they're a very passive character at the start of the book. And there's a way in which the. The caring doesn't necessarily mean helping, just means that they see what is happening and don't feel like they can do much to stop it. But hopefully, as the story goes on, they get a little bit more agency or they feel a little bit more active, but who knows?

[A]

Well, I will be hopeful that is the case.

[B]

That was really long rambling of me just being sad about the earth in this moment.

[A]

Not rambly at all and definitely worthy of our thinking. I wanted to wrap back around to what you had just recently said about making Yara non binary and finding that to be a kind of real opening and energy and connection. And I. As I was finishing canon last week, I became increasingly interested in how Yara's non binary ness was a key to understanding the novel's refusal to be one thing. Is it an epic, you know, religious canon until it's. It blasphemes a hero story, until the nature of heroism comes very much into question. And. And I wonder if you felt that or. Or have come to think of the non binariness of a character as non binary ness of a novel form.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that genre has always been something that troubled me because again, I. I would love to have control over things, but it seemed that anytime I would learn the rules to a genre, I would say, see an author celebrated who broke those rules.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Then what is. What does it mean to be called an epic or to be known as like a horror or like a. A gothic horror? Right. I think genre has always frustrated me in those. In one, in.

[C]

In.

[B]

As a writer, it's frustrated me but also as a teacher of writing because I like, I teach like sci fi classes or I teach dystopia classes and I, I go through the rules, I go through the sort of elements of a genre and then I, and then I show them a bunch of authors who break those rules and I'm like, follow the rules.

[A]

But yeah, I just interviewed Deb Olin Unferth and their. Her most recent novel, Earth 7 is so magnificent at breaking all the rules all the time. Until you wonder, well, were there any rules to begin with?

[B]

Amazing. Yeah, exactly. And I think that it would be so nice for my brain if everything fit perfectly into little categories, but they don't. And, and I, I thought it would be really fun to not try to force this book to being one thing or another thing. And so it is, it is an epic. I still think of it as poetry, but it's also a novel and it's. I think that that's fine. I think that there's a way in which there aren't really binaries when it comes to like what a book can be or what a human can be. And so it just made sense to me to, to call this book, like to have that sort of subtitle be the. That it's a non binary epic.

[A]

Lovely. Before I let you go, Paige, I would love to know.

[B]

Let me go? Yeah, I know for much longer than this.

[A]

I have so much more to say and talk about, but I don't want to, you know, eat all your day's time. And so I'm dying to know what you've been reading and loving recently and if you'd recommend some things for us.

[B]

Oh, absolutely. So I feel lucky to get to read some books before they like officially come out. And so a book that I read recently is by the, the, the writer Tom Lynn and it's called Babylon, South Dakota.

[A]

And sitting on my, on my shelf right there. And it's.

[B]

Have you read it?

[A]

No, I haven't yet, but I'm excited to.

[B]

It's really good and I like. It's such an interesting story about like you expect it to be wedded to like realism. It's about like a Chinese American family settling down in South Dakota and, and then a nuclear, nuclear sort of facility is built right near their house. And then like some weird stuff happens. It's so great. And it also has a dog in it that can't die.

[A]

Oh, that's your kind of dog.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. So I was like, this is my kind of story. Highly recommended. It comes out May 26th. So soon.

[A]

Oh, amazing. Yeah. I'm gonna try and interview her.

[B]

You got it ahead of time. So you get to feel really special about that.

[A]

It's my favorite thing to feel special about.

[B]

Yeah. And then there is a book coming out in October and it's Laylee Long Soldiers second full length collection of poems and it's just called We Like W E. And it has been so delightful to read her first book whereas was a really big deal in the poetry world and I think beyond the poetry world. And so everyone's kind of been waiting with bated breath for whatever Laylee was going to do next. And it is looking at the COVID

[A]

and it looks so good, so beautiful.

[B]

I know. And so that has been something I've been moving kind of slowly through because I want to savor my time with it. And so those are two books that I've been. Would highly recommend to any reader, even if you don't think you like poetry.

[A]

Yeah. And I feel like part of my hope for this podcast is that people who feel like they maybe don't like poetry or, you know, or any genre will just, you know, open themselves up to the particularity of certain works. And this one sounds great. I'm excited myself to read Babylon, South Dakota, But I can't emphasize enough how much everyone needs to run out and buy Canon by Paige Lewis, a non binary epic that does more than you could imagine a single book doing with its poetic voice, its turn to so many texts that drive and light our imagination while being something entirely of itself. And it was such a pleasure to get you on the show and be able to talk about it.

[C]

Paige, thank you so much for having me.

[B]

It has been a delight to talk with you, even though everything you said was so smart and great. And I think that there is a way in which you could clip out everything that I've said that is so not true. It could just be you talking about it and sort of the questions that you ask could just be for like the listener to think about. But no, I really appreciate how much time and energy you spent on this book because I feel like you really, you get it and that means a lot.

[A]

Well, I thank you for saying that, but it is a book that has a hospitality about it that draws you in, and I found it entirely encapsulating. And I'm so glad to know it. And so thanks again, Paige, and I hope we'll get a chance to talk again soon.

[C]

Of course.

[A]

Well, that's all from me for now. My thanks to Paige Lewis. For coming on to talk about their debut novel, Canon. You can find links to purchase Canon and all of Paige's recommended books at the website burnedbybooks.com there you'll find all of our previous episodes, links to buy a podcast, T shirt, and ways to get in contact as you listen. Take a moment to rate the show on itunes, Spotify, and now YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts. Until next time, this has been burned by Books. Sam.