Alice Kuipers brings her debut novel, Life on the Refrigerator Door, to this year’s Festival. Told exclusively through notes on the refrigerator — some casual, some intimate, some funny, some angry — the novel is a portrait of the relationship between a working mother and her teenaged daughter during the course of one life-altering year. Kuuipers was born in London in 1979 and now lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She has published stories in literary magazines and been a producer for CBC radio.

15-year-old Claire and her mother seem to keep missing each other. Life on the Refrigerator Door is a poignant collection of a year’s worth of notes between mother and daughter. The two women tackle the everyday; allowance, work, boys, exams and the difficult, when Claire’s mother is diagnosed with cancer.