Aaron Kreuter: I really, truly believe that fiction can change the world.

Why I Write: Q & A with novelist, poet and academic Aaron Kreuter

Aaron Kreuter is the author of five books, including the poetry collection Shifting Baseline Syndrome, a 2022 finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His work has been shortlisted for two Vine Awards for Jewish Literature, a Raymond Souster Award, and a ReLit Award. He lives in Toronto.

Describe your writing space. What do you love about it?

My writing space is in a constant state of explosion/implosion from the amount of books in it. Books on the barnboard shelves. Books on bookcases. Books on the floor. Books hanging from the ceiling. My desk is organized clutter, organized chaos. There’s my laptop. There’s a second monitor to stage left. Around the second monitor: three melt bead bears (brown, black, polar). Three little wooden carvings: a green tent, an orange tent, a pine tree, a little wooden carving that says “FUCK.” A small wooden canoe. Crystals. An interesting shaped rock from Lake Superior, with a busted Trey Anastasio guitar key chain on top. The corkboard and wall covered in lists, drawings, photos. Various and sundry writing/office supplies. Art by my daughter. Mementos from the deep past. Usually a mug of tea or a bowl of chocolate covered almonds.

How important is it to have ‘a room of one’s own’?

Extremely important. I know how lucky I am that I have a room in my house to write and work; I know what comes with that privilege. A room of one’s own is also especially important if we think of it not only in the physical sense of a place to sequester yourself from responsibilities to focus on your writing, but as time, as mental energy, as possibility.

Any rules for when you’re in this ‘space’?

Not really. Due to the aforementioned level of books, there aren’t many options besides sitting at the desk or sitting at the small reading chair. If I’m in either of those, no matter what I’m doing, I consider it productive.

What is your writing practice like?

My writing practice is constantly changing, depending on the project (or projects) I’m working on, the season, my moods (which can be as volatile as the seasons), domestic or career obligations. When I’m deep in a project, say when I was working on the first draft of Lake Burntshore, the most important daily goal is to just sit down and write, to open that pocket, to be in that other world for a time.

Do you quantify your process by word count or hours spent writing?

Both. But, really, what’s important to me is just getting into the project, whatever that may be, for however long. I don’t hold myself to particular daily goals. If you start every day, or as near to every day as you can, the story or novel or poem will grow. For me, that’s (usually) enough.

What is your creative process like?

When I’m writing, I think of it as a three-way relationship between my conscious mind, my unconscious mind, and the page. When the writing is going well, that triangular engine is humming and revving, and I’m just more-or-less along for the ride. Away from the page, it’s all about catching ideas, writing them down, worrying, procrastinating, reading, walking, laughing, listening or making music, being low or being high, waiting for that spark, forcing that spark, being organized, being terribly unorganized, sleeping, waking, raging, loving, despairing, hoping.

What is the easiest and most difficult part of the process for you?

I tend not to think of writing in terms of ease or difficulty, and as I constantly tell my students, there are no corners to cut: the work is the work. It demands what it demands. That being said, I suppose having ideas comes pretty naturally to me (for now, at least). Catching and building on the ideas is, for me, the main part of the work. In terms of difficulty, it can be hard to see what a particular project is when you’re inside it. Working away on one tree, the shape of the forest can became vague.

Why do you write? What do you love about writing?

I write to capture something about the world. I write to turn time and experience into narrative. I write to communicate, to compel, to plead, to impress. I write to make a claim for belonging in this “animal soup of time,” as Ginsberg called it. To claim my little piece of the soup. To be in dialogue. To be in vehement disagreement. To shout shout shout It does not have to be this way. Because feeling words and sentences and lives and images and ideas come out of my hands is a drug with no downsides.

How do you manage writing with other demands on your time?

I feel like writing is what I’m here to do. With that knowledge, I can be away from it for long stretches of time. It’ll always be there for me when I manage to get back. Not to say that when I’m not writing it doesn’t affect my mood, because, oh boy, does it ever.

What has influenced you most as a writer?

Great novels. Great loves. Anarchist thinking. Geology. Diaspora. War. Hypocrisy. The suburbs. The backcountry. Mountains of aggregate passed on the highway. The fact that language is the most revolutionary technology we’ve ever invented and some billionaires in Silicon Valley are trying to take it away from us with their AI and LLMs and plans for dystopic world domination.

Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?

When I’m working on a book, I’m trying not to think of the other books. Each book is its own world, its own galaxy, its own cosmos. Afterwards, of course, I can see connections, thematic links, wormholes. I do want each book to be different, to be better in some ineffable way, than the ones that came before. Perhaps that’s why I’ve published in so many different genres.

Best advice you’ve ever been given.

To never read the goodreads reviews. (Do I take this advice? Most certainly not.)

What does success look like to you?

To be read. To have the time and space to write. To be continuously breaking new narrative and fictional ground. To piss a lot of people off. To have my most radical sentences spray-painted in the heart of empire. To wake up in a world that isn’t built on money, destruction of the land, accumulation of things and wealth, where profit and cost aren’t the ruling epistemology. To be forgiven.

Tell us a few things that would surprise us to learn about you: the person, the writer. 

I love to play guitar and be outside. I’ve seen the jamband Phish over eighty times. I have a tattoo of a white pine on my right arm. When I’m writing I feel most at peace with the world, even if what I’m writing is very, very angry.

“I really, truly believe that fiction can change the world.”

What can books teach us? How do they change us?

Books teach us how other people think, how other people feel, how other people live. Books, novels, in particular, show us how one particular consciousness can take the materials of their life and turn them into language, into narrative time. Novels change us because they become us—the good ones, at least.

What was a transformative book for you in your life?

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Immersing myself in a successful anarchist society established on the barely-habitable moon of a capitalist, Earth-like planet, forever changed me. Every single sentence, every word, in that book, thrums with the knowledge that better worlds are possible, and it infected me soul, mind, and body. I’ve read it three times and I cannot wait for the fourth.

Which authors, living or dead, would you most like to discuss writing with?

Le Guin. Toni Morrison. Philip Roth. One of the writers from the golden age of Yiddish fiction, probably Mordecai Pinchas Sofer. George Eliot. Hunter S. Thompson, but that would be more for his read on the current collapse of the American empire.

Who are your favourite writers writing today?

Saeed Teebi. Michael Chabon. Eleanor Catton. Deeshaw Philyaw. Alicia Elliott. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Waubgeshig Rice. Isabella Hamad. David Huebert. Eric Schmaltz.

What books are you currently loving?

Can I answer this question with what new books I’m excited to read? There’s so much amazing Canadian fiction and non-fiction coming out right now, it’s almost impossible to keep up. That (always growing) list would include: The Immortal Woman, by Su Chang. Everything is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe. How to Survive a Bear Attack by Claire Cameron. I literally cannot wait to read Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s new book, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, which happens to come out on the same day as Lake Burntshore.

If you were a bookseller what 5 books would you hand-sell to readers and why?

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. A novel about anarchist guerilla gardeners, billionaires, and resource extraction, this novel blew the lid right off my head.

Anything and everything by Ursula K. Le Guin. All she touches turns to literary fission.

Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg: This is Our Territory by Gidigaa Migizi (Doug Williams), as told to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson while on the land. Required reading for anybody who lives in the Anishinaabe lands of Southern and Central Ontario.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice: a standout in the Indigenous horror genre, this book deserves its longevity on best seller lists (its sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, is also fantastic).

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hamad. Writing about a Palestinian theatre troupe trying to stage an Arab-language version of Hamlet in the occupied West Bank, Hamad creates a gripping, moving, character-driven story of resistance, coming together across differences, and the power of art to insist on better worlds.

What advice do you have for writers?

To write your rough drafts with a care-free and anything-goes attitude; worry about everything else later (there’ll be plenty of time for that!). To learn to get out of your own way. To trust the work. To make community. To, no matter the odds or the cost or the mood, keep going. To celebrate.

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Thank you Aaron.

Lake Burntshore, Aaron’s newest novel, was published by ECW Press on April 22, 2025.

A funny and emotionally resonant coming-of-age novel about one summer of momentous social and political change at a Jewish sleepover camp

It’s the summer of 2013 and 21-year-old Ruby, a counselor at Camp Burntshore, can’t wait to supervise a rowdy cabin of 11-year-olds, smoke weed by the fire, and argue about which city make the best bagels. But when Brent, the camp owner’s son, hires Israeli soldiers to deal with a staffing shortfall, Ruby, a committed anti-Zionist, must decide if she’s willing to jeopardize her place at Burntshore to fight Brent over the contentious issues of Jewish belonging and settler colonialism, even as she finds herself falling in love with one of the soldiers, the sweetly handsome Etai.

Soon it becomes clear that the conflict is not just about the camp’s internal divisions but also about Burntshore’s relationship with the neighboring Black Spruce First Nation, strained because of Brent’s larger scheme to buy the Crown land surrounding the lake. As campers swim, go canoe tripping, and stage an over-the-top musical, Ruby has to contend with her feelings for Etai while simultaneously trying to save her beloved camp from greed and colonialism. A social satire, romance, and political commentary all in one, Lake Burntshore celebrates the contemporary Jewish world through its most iconic symbol — the often idyllic yet always dramatic summer camp.

“Lake Burntshore is a summer camp story like no other. Ambitious in theme and impressively effective in narrative, this novel brilliantly unpacks the extensive, harmful impacts of colonialism with nuance and care. From Palestine to Ontario cottage country, Aaron Kreuter deftly gives agency to, and celebrates the humanity of, the people of the land. To anyone in a diaspora that’s struggled under oppression for generations, this story hits very close to home. By honouring the land and the people fighting for recognition and justice, Lake Burntshore is both timely and timeless.” — Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Crusted Snow