Michael
Helm
Michael Helm was previously nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2010 for Cities of Refuge and in 2004 for In the Place of Last Things. His debut novel, The Projectionist, was nominated for the Giller Prize and the Trillium Book Award. Helm’s writing on fiction, poetry, and visual arts has appeared in North American newspapers and magazines, including Brick, where he serves as editor. He teaches at York University in Toronto.
Writers & Books
Videos
Michael Helm on his award-nominated novel "After James"
Award History
Jury Citation
“A warning, a lament, a virtuoso engagement with our times, After James is a singular, puzzle-box of a novel delivered in gorgeous prose. In three stages, with passing homage to the genres of horror, detective, and apocalyptic novels, Michael Helm brilliantly extrapolates riveting narratives from the wonderment of contemporary biology and physics. Failing to connect to a Godhead of old, the characters in After James are transfigured by pills, or by having to defend themselves against the maniacal genius of a computer hacker, or by warring against viral endemics. Readers may find themselves challenged: the jurors did. Those who persevere will be rewarded. Speculative, revelatory, dramatic, and subtly interconnected, the three sections of After James veer ever closer to an end time, yet the novel celebrates being human, and being here, now” — 2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury (Lauren B. Davis, Trevor Ferguson, and Pasha Malla)
