Kate Cayley
Author / Auteur·rice
Kate Cayley’s first novel, Property, is published by Coach House Books. She has also published two short story collections and three collections of poetry, and her plays have been performed in Canada, the US and the UK. She has won the Trillium Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and the Mitchell Prize for Poetry, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, among other awards. She lives in Toronto with her family.
Property
A spring day in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood begins unremarkably. By evening, someone has died.
Nat, a middle-aged queer mother of two, frets about her isolated son, locked in his room upstairs. Her fellow parent and unlikely friend Maddy, a failed actress, obsesses over her missed opportunities and her marriage. Next door, Ilya, a young construction worker grappling with the aftermath of a terrible industrial accident, listens to their conversations as he struggles with the flooding basement of the derelict house. An old woman watches the street through the gap in her curtains. A lonely man wanders. A dog sits on a front porch, patiently chewing at his rope. A buried stream rises in the excavated basement, witnessed by rats. Children observe adults without the adults noticing. Along the small network of interlocking streets, small tensions and seemingly inconsequential exchanges accumulate, until tragedy strikes.
24.95 $
02
May 2026
Beyond the Book
Join us as four writers share what we don’t always see on the page. From a day in the life of troubled residents, hope amidst capitalism and climate change denial, and the failures of medical paternalism, these are some of the many themes that inform these four astounding works.
10.00 $
03
May 2026
At What Cost
This event will begin with a Flash FRYE reading by Spencer Folkins (Resting Directly on the Earth, Emergency Flash Mob Press), followed by an in-conversation with Chris Bailey (Forecast: Pretty Bleak, M&S) and Kate Cayley (Property, Coach House). Join our guests as they discuss class, privilege, labour, and the events that leave us forever changed.
10.00 $