Cover Photo: Emily St. John Mandel in conversation with Dr. Kasia Van Schaik. Credit: Alex Prong
Acclaimed fiction writer Emily St. John Mandel visited New Brunswick for the first time on Wednesday October 21, 2026, stopping in Fredericton at Wilmot Church to promote her new novel, Exit Party (2026). This was just one stop on her 48-stop book tour, which she says proves reading is not “dead” despite the recent surge of articles claiming it is. Dr. Kasia Van Schaik, author and Co-director of the UNB Creative Writing Program, moderated a talk, after which Mandel answered questions from the audience and signed their books.
Exit Party is a standalone novel set in what fans are calling the “Mandelverse,” the dystopian world where many of her novels take place. In fact, the protagonist of Exit Party, Ari, is the villain of another Mandel novel, The Singer’s Gun (2009). Mandel explains that the idea for the book came to her because she thinks a lot about counter-lives: lives one would live if they made different choices. Exit Party is set in 2031 in a world where the United States collapses into a series of competing militias, in some ways a counter-life of the country itself.
Mandel quips that her wife keeps wanting her to write a utopia, but she can’t stay away from dystopian worlds. Part of this comes from her obsession with transience; she finds it quite hopeful that nothing lasts forever.
“Everything ends. And there’s such grief and loss in that idea… but there’s also this weird kind of hope in that. Because it means that the worst moments in your life, and the worst moments in your country’s life, will not last forever,” Mandel says.
The book itself is split in two. There’s an “A Side” and a “B Side,” which explore alternate realities centered on similar characters. Van Schaik points out that the book is less about the end of the world and more about living in the “long ending.”
Mandel agrees, saying, “Civilizations end. And yet here we are.”
Westminster Bookmark hosted this reading, and they have plenty more copies of Exit Party if you’d like to get a copy of your own.
