Kai Thomas

Kai Thomas is a Canadian writer from Ottawa, Ontario,^[1] whose debut novel In the Upper Country was the winner of the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.^[2]

The novel is a historical fiction about the Underground Railroad, centring on a journalist for an abolitionist newspaper in rural Ontario who is interviewing a woman in jail for killing a bounty hunter who was trying to capture fugitive slaves.^[3] It was also a shortlisted finalist for the 2023 Amazon.ca First Novel Award,^[4] the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2023 Governor General's Awards^[5] and the 2024 Walter Scott Prize.^[6]