About Lauren

Lauren Carter’s enthralling elegiac tale of what happens when the oil disappears is tender and terrifying and absolutely believable. In the same vein as Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro’s speculative fiction, Swarm belongs to that illustrious tradition of combining what is human and familiar with life-changing circumstances.

The stories in Lauren Carter’s Places Like These explore the landscape of grief and anxiety that disrupt the quietude of so-called ordinary lives and places. Carter turns her penetrating writer’s gaze toward that which makes us human, the ways in which we must carry on, for better and for worse. I loved this highly readable collection.

Through these poems, Lauren Carter tells a beautiful and heartfelt story of lives lived, lives lost and lives never-to-be. Lauren put her whole self into this work and you can feel it.

Lauren Carter has created a novel for our times: how do we learn to live in a world filled with tragedy? With compassion as big as her talent, Lauren infuses this epic story of the broken-hearted with love, life, and hope. This Has Nothing to Do with You is an antidote to apathy and despair. I’m an instant fan.

Places Like These by Lauren Carter offers a magnetic and clear-eyed examination of the times in our lives when we can say we’ve truly lived. Told with Carter’s unmistakably world-bending lyricism, the stories in this collection splinter with moments of seismic recognition; they tug at the places in ourselves we’ve forgotten existed but inform who we are. An unforgettable read.

These are stories of sadness and longing, of wanting but not getting, but this—of course—is also life itself, and the collection is less bleak than it sounds, because these are stories of characters building a home and a finding a world within its realities, of finding love, spots of light, connection and meaning.

I found [This Has Nothing To Do With You] tender and devastating. A deep dive into the trauma created by family secrets — and secret-keeping. Also, an ode to Northern Ontario!

[Lichen Bright] is a stunning debut. It has many metaphorical doorways, leading to many readings and re-readings, and the architecture of the book is such that one cannot but stop and wonder at the beauty of Carter’s craft and skill.

This was just a damn fine piece of fiction. I was initially interested when the Toronto Star posted a review calling it dystopian sci-fi, but it was much more than that. A story of futuristic survival, sure, but one with such realistic characters and beautiful, tragic writing that it transcends the genre. Highly recommended.

Swarm is an intelligent and moving narrative. The topic is relevant and the story has lessons to teach. Lauren paints her characters brilliantly and I know a good book when I am sad when I come to the end. I highly recommend.

I read This Has Nothing to Do with You in one weekend. The characters felt like old friends and the pacing was perfect. The kind of book where you want to keep reading because you need to know, but you also want to take it slow and listen deeply.Carter dips into some pretty dark realities, but she does it so gently. This is just the kind of truthful, compassionate storytelling the world needs now.

The sustained thematic work, the attention-to-detail with the characterization, the delicate balance between known and unknown: Lauren Carter is exacting and perceptive. She tells demanding and rewarding stories.