RIEL NASON is a Canadian novelist and textile artist. Her acclaimed debut novel The Town That Drowned won the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize for Canada and Europe, and the 2012 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. It was also shortlisted for several other literary awards as well as longlisted for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her second novel, All the Things We Leave Behind, was published in September, 2016. Riel’s original quilts have been exhibited across Canada including being shown twice at Quilt Canada (the National Juried Show). Nason grew up in Hawkshaw, NB, and now lives in Quispamsis, NB, with her husband, son, daughter and cats.

Riel Nason's profile page

• Short-listed, New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction

"This book is about much more than a summer spent growing up. It's about the meaning of life and death and how a person copes with a great loss. It's about haunting and spiritual messages and whether we're open to receiving them. It's about siblings — both the fun memories and the complex relationships they share."

<i>The Vancouver Sun</i>

"All the Things We Leave Behind is full of sensory detail and evocative prose, and like its author, Riel Nason, is a gift to Canadian literature. From the cheerful Purple Barn antique shop, to the mysitical boneyard deep in the woods, to a missing brother named Bliss, main character Violet carries us effortlessly through this lovely coming-of-age story not afraid to show its haunting side."

Karma Brown

"A powerful rumination on the universal aches of loss, existential dread, and adolescence."

<i>Quill & Quire</i>

"Nason has written a tender and loving portrayal of one young girl grappling with absence in a world crowded with the past. Full of heart, honesty and beauty."

Brian Francis

"Filled with strong characters and objects of forgotten desire — perfume bottles, tintypes, rabbit-eared chairs — Riel Nason's All the Things We Leave Behind subtly unravels the mind's delusions and the past's seduction. Haunting, bittersweet."

Beth Powning