Cordelia Strube

Cordelia Strube is a Canadian novelist and playwright known for sharp, darkly comic fiction about people negotiating damaged families and difficult institutions. Lemon, published by Coach House Books in 2009, centres on a fiercely observant high-school student whose complicated household, struggling friends, and poor academic record leave her trying to survive with intelligence and abrasive humour. The novel was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, recognition that placed it among Strube’s most prominent works. Before and after Lemon, she wrote novels including Alex & Zee, Teaching Pigs to Sing, Planet Reese, and Milosz, as well as a substantial body of radio drama. Her experience writing plays is visible in the compressed exchanges and forceful voices associated with her fiction. Lemon offers a particularly direct introduction to Strube’s work because its youthful narrator exposes hypocrisy without simplifying the grief and responsibility around her, combining a coming-of-age structure with social satire.