Books
“One of the first books I read by Lauren Carter was her poetry collection, Following Sea. These gorgeous poems set the tone for the engrossing sort of writing one can expect in all her work.”
– Hollay Ghadery, 14 Canadian Multi-Genre Writers You Have To Read
“The sustained thematic work, the attention-to-detail with characterization, the delicate balance between known and unknown: Lauren Carter is exacting and perceptive. She tells demanding and rewarding stories.”
– Marcie McCauley, Lauren Carter’s Prose & Poetry: A Backwards Glance
The Longest Night
Coming Sept 2025 from Freehand Books
A taut and uncanny thriller about one girl’s search for home, melding time travel, magic realism, horror, and literary suspense.
One forty-below December night, 18-year-old Ash Hayes finds herself locked out of her family home in rural Minnesota. She seeks shelter from the freezing cold and certain death at the closest house on the road, with neighbours she hasn’t yet met.
The next morning, everything is off-kilter – the neighbours’ house has no mirrors or modern technology, and all the windows blocked. When Ash tries to call her parents, their numbers are disconnected. One of the strange inhabitants there is a doctor, who offers Ash a terrible form of help and won’t take no for an answer. In her efforts to get out of the house and back to her regular life, though, Ash finds herself transported to an even stranger place and time, setting off a chain of events that connect with (and alter) her past and her future.
For fans of Mona Awad and Emily St. John Mandel, The Longest Night is a high-stakes, genre-twisting story about searching for something stable in a world where reality is ever-changing and can’t be trusted.
Places Like These
A widow visits a spiritualist community to attempt to contact her late husband. A grieving teenager confronts the unfairness of his small-town world and the oncoming ecological disaster. A sexual assault survivor navigates her boyfriend’s tricky family and her own confusing desires. A mother examines unresolved guilt while seeking her missing daughter in a city slum. A lover exploits his girlfriend’s secrets for his own purposes. Whether in Ecuador or San Francisco, rural Ontario or northern Manitoba, the landscape in each of Carter’s poignant short stories reflects each character’s journey.
Psychologically complex and astute, Places Like These plumbs the vast range of human reactions to those things which make us human—love, grief, friendship, betrayal, and the intertwined yet contrasting longing for connection and independence.
Published by Book*hug Press, 2023
Praise for Places Like These
Thirty nine fiction and non-fiction books to read this spring —The Globe and Mail
May is Short Story Month — here are 14 Canadian collections to check out — CBC Books
Stories for All Seasons: Can’t Miss Fiction Hits —Kerry Clare, 49th Shelf
This Has Nothing To Do With You
Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction Winner
When Melony Barnett’s mother commits a violent murder, Mel is left struggling with the loss of her parents and her future. For more than two years, she drifts around the continent, trying to carve out a life that has nothing to do with her past, before returning to her Northern Ontario home and adopting a rescue dog—a mastiff with a tragic history. As she struggles to help the dog heal and repair her relationship with her brother, Matt, she begins to uncover layers of secrets about her family —secrets that were the fuel for her mother’s actions.
This Has Nothing to Do With You is a compulsively readable novel that follows a dynamic cast of characters, revealing the complexity of the bonds that are formed through trauma and grief—with siblings, lovers, friends, and dogs.
Published by Freehand Books, 2019
Praise for This Has Nothing To Do With You
“Unflinching and mesmerizing, Lauren Carter’s novel explores the daily impact of generational trauma, the need to love unreservedly, and a woman inching toward healing by dredging up the past.” – Emily Pohl-Weary
Weaving a tale of trauma with empathy, honesty and hope — Prairie Books Now
Video Book Review — I’ve Read This
Interview, Turning Pages UMFM 101.5 FM
Check Out the 80s/90s MixTape for THNTDWY!
4.1/5 on GoodReads
Swarm
In the not-too-distant future, thirty-seven-year-old Sandy lives a challenging and unfamiliar life. She survives by fishing, farming, and beekeeping on an isolated island with her partner, Marvin, and friend, Thomson. When the footprints of a thieving child start appearing in their garden, the family must come together to protect both the child and their fragile community.
In the face of scarcity, Sandy still dreams of being a mother. The thought of a child compels her to revisit her earlier life in a city plagued by power outages, unemployment, and protests. There she met Marvin and joined his violent cause, initiating a chain of events that led to tragic and life-altering consequences.
A powerful debut novel, Swarm is about persevering in a time of shrinking options, and coming to terms with regrettable choices.
Published by Brindle & Glass, 2013
Praise for Swarm
“Imbued with dark lyricism and a disturbingly credible view of the end of the world, Carter’s debut sifts through the lives of people existing on an isolated island, grappling just to survive a time of enormous social upheaval and change…A somberly melodic, literary foray.” — Booklist
“Though it is future scenarios that have pushed these characters to act, the questions of this novel are the questions of our time.” —The Winnipeg Review
“. . . one of the more realistic recent imaginings of the shape of things to come.” —Toronto Star
Following Sea
Spanning almost two hundred years, Following Sea finds anchor in the submerged regions of the heart. With great care, Lauren Carter wades into family histories and geography, all the while charting her own territories. Carried by the ebb and flow of language, Carter’s second collection explores issues of infertility, identity, and settler migration, offering a tender examination of home. Urgent and intimate, Following Sea leads us along the shoreline of Carter’s Manitoulin memories to show us what she has carried up from the depths.
Published by Turnstone Press, 2019
Cover art by Laura Carter
Praise for Following Sea
“Carter explores the push of expectations against the trauma of failure and loss. It is a collection that affirms love, and the solace one can find in landscape, with family and friends, through writing. Throughout the book, Carter’s gorgeous spare language navigates toward renewal…” – Prairie Fire
“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.” – Naomi MacKinnon, ConsumedbyInk.ca
These poems are grounded in the spare, sensuous language of contemplative attention, at once raw and graceful, quaking with loss. Here, the steadfast cling to life through bitter winters in Northern Ontario, with only slivers of fish for survival, yet, like their descendants, remain lit by the “tiny diamonds” of their dreams. Following Sea speaks to the listening heart, to those who know intimately how barren territory inspires strength that survives generations.” — Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Lichen Bright
Longlisted for the ReLit Award
From the publisher:
The poems in Lichen Bright follow the protagonist into a spare, stripped down, emotionally bereft relationship, and document both the witch-haunted darkness that human relationships can spawn, and the persistently creative bedrock grasp with which the mind resists the lure of the witches. The poems are thoughtful, subtle, and emotionally charged, but not sentimental. Nor do they bog down in their emotion – there is a powerful forward motion to the collection. Carter is not a poet swept away on the current of her emotion; there is a craftedness to this collection which displays thoughtful reflection, consideration, and reconsideration.
Published by Your Scrivener Press, 2005
Cover art by Laura Carter
Praise for Lichen Bright
“This collection 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.”
– Kim Fahner, Canadian Book Review Annual
“I’ve always wanted to find the right situation to use the word “evocative” and now I’ve found it. These short poems take you to places you swear you’ve seen in your dreams, describe moments in life that you know you’ve experienced, but never had the words to describe. Succinct, eloquent, melodic, enrapturing.”
– SpiralCee (Amazon.ca)
Out of Print (used copies can be found online or contact Lauren to order)
