Join Lethbridge Public Library as we host best-selling author, Emily Austin. She will be discussing libraries, literature, and her latest book Is This a Cry for Help?. This is an after-hours, ticketed event. Events go on sale on October 1 at the Main Branch Customer Service Desk. Tickets are $10 per person. Audience questions are welcome and there will be a book signing. Books will be available for purchase on-site, courtesy of Analog Books.
Emily Austin (she/her) is a bestselling queer Canadian author of five books across fiction and poetry, including the instant bestsellers, Is This a Cry for Help? (2026) and We Could Be Rats (2025). Her upcoming novel, Garbage Girl, is being published in winter of 2028.
Her debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, was published by Atria Books and Simon & Schuster Canada in 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon.ca First Novel Award, longlisted for the 2022 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and shortlisted for the 2022 Ottawa Book Award.
Her second novel, Interesting Facts About Space was nominated for the 2025 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, long listed for The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and named the #1 bestselling LGBTQIA+ book in Canada, and became the most circulated LGBTQIA+ book in Canadian libraries in 2024.
Her debut poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers was released in 2024. It was a a CBC Best Book of Poetry in 2024, and a finalist for the 2025 Archibald Lampman Award.