Canon, the debut novel from poet Paige Lewis, is about two damaged outsiders trying to earn God’s favor in a violent world split between “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys.” Yara, isolated after family rejection and a toxic relationship, is chosen for a divine mission to kill a feared army leader, while Adrena, a prophet desperate for heaven and recognition, pursues her own dangerous vision of heroism. As their paths converge, the novel becomes an irreverent, emotionally charged exploration of faith, destiny, power, and what it means to deserve salvation.
We asked Lewis, who previously released the poetry collection Space Struck and is the coeditor of Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance, to answer our recurring My Reading Life so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
It’s so hard to think of the first book, because all my favorites sort of mash together in the timeline! I will say that I discovered Edgar Allan Poe early, and I remember my mom giving me a gilded-edged copy of his collected works. I carried it with me to school every day, and people often mistook it for a Bible. The strangeness and the despair in Poe’s work was so intriguing to me at a young age, and I’m sure this early obsession forever modified my writing brain.
What book helped you through puberty?
I feel so lucky to have family members who consider books to be great gifts. My aunt gave me a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry when I was a kid, and I remember really clinging to the poetry during my early teens. I was often alone in my room and struggling with understanding my place in the world, and it helped so much to read Dickinson’s poems. It was so liberating to discover that in poetry a person could travel all over the world without leaving their home.
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
I remember in a high school literature class being tasked with choosing a book from a class list. Whichever book I chose, I would have to write a paper on and give a presentation on at the end of the year. The rule was that if we tried to switch books halfway through, we’d lose a letter grade overall. I chose Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, but the length stressed me out and I didn’t believe I could truly understand the content. So, I switched to Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This was the first time I had ever even heard of Vonnegut, and I quickly devoured everything else he wrote. But I wish I had persevered with reading Anna Karenina as a teen. Plus, I hated getting an A- on my project!
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
This is such a good question! I’d love to get a little weird genre-wise with my DGW syllabus and read a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. We’d start off with Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood Trilogy, which should be required reading even outside of speculative fiction courses. Then we would read John Cage’s Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse), which would be a great example of a sustained experimental writing project—Cage wrote it over the course of sixteen years and used chance operations to determine word-count, color, font, etc. Then we’d read Layli Long Soldier’s newest poetry collection, We, and Sonia Sanchez’s epic Does Your House Have Lions? If there’s time left in the semester, we’d read Donald Barthelme’s short story collection, Sixty Stories. We’d read all of them!
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
So many, it would be ridiculous to try to list them all. In all honesty, every book I have ever read has been a guide for writing Canon. The epics that I read were especially helpful. Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey influenced Canon’s narrative structure. Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day was a major inspiration for the dream sequences in Canon. And The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du helped me to better explore loneliness and grief in my book.
What books are on your nightstand now?
If I’m being honest, there are two books by Philip K. Dick that I recently re-read, but that I’ve been too lazy to put back on the bookshelf. Another book on my nightstand is Asmodeus by Rita Indiana and translated by Achy Obejas. It comes out with Graywolf Press September 2026 and I feel lucky to get an early look at this strange and amazing book!