Dominoes at the Crossroads

In Dominoes at the Crossroads, Kaie Kellough maps an alternate nation — one populated by Caribbean Canadians who hopscotch across the country. The characters navigate race, class, and coming-of-age. Seeking opportunity, some fade into the world around them, even as their minds hitchhike, dream, and soar. Some appear in different times and hemispheres, whether as student radicals, secret agents, historians, fugitive slaves, or jazz musicians.

From the cobblestones of Montreal's Old Port through the foliage of a South American rainforest; from a basement in wartime Paris to a metro in Montréal during the October Crisis; Kellough's fierce imagination reconciles the personal and ancestral experience with the present moment, grappling with the abiding feeling of being elsewhere, even when here. (From Esplanade Books)

Dominoes at the Crossroads was on the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist and was a runner-up for a Danuta Gleed Literary Award in 2021.

Dominoes at the Crossroads is on the Canada Reads 2022 longlist.

Kaie Kellough is a writer based in Montreal. His novel Accordéon was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award in 2017. He is also the author of the poetry collection Magnetic Equator, which won the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. He was also a judge, along with Stephen Collis, Dionne Brand, for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.

• Kaie Kellough on the 'remarkable' Collected Poems of Lorna Goodison
• How an album title inspired Kaie Kellough to become a writer
• Take a walk through Kaie Kellough's Montreal of poetry, seditious cafes and immigrant vitality
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• Kaie Kellough imagines a COVID-19 symphony at the Sala Rossa
• Griffin Poetry Prize winner Kaie Kellough plays with words and sound to write vivid poetry and fiction
• The best Canadian fiction of 2020
• 25 books by Black Canadian authors to read in 2021
• 20 books by Black Canadian authors to read in honour of Emancipation Day 2021

How Kaie Kellough's family inspires his writing

My grandparents, my mom's parents, immigrated to Canada from Guyana, South America in their 50s. My mom had come to Canada a number of years before that to study and then all her siblings came as well. My mom's parents' house in Canada had Guyanese food cooking. There were pictures and maps of Guyana. There were books by Guyanese authors. Guyana was something that was discussed. It was real, it was an important presence. 

It was like growing up with an awareness that a person like you has a place elsewhere, you're not just from here.- Kaie Kellough

It was also a magical place that was, I think for my grandparents, frozen in time. It was very different from Vancouver or Calgary, the cities where I grew up. It was like growing up with an awareness that a person like you has a place elsewhere, you're not just from here. There is this entire set of Indigenous mythologies, various histories of various groups — Portuguese, African, Chinese — that inform your lineage in your presence and your existence. It's through them that I have the connection and awareness of thinking about how fascinating Guyana is. 

Read more in his interview with CBC Books.

Interviews with Kaie Kellough

Walking with Kaie Kellough in Montreal

3 years ago

Duration 7:04

Montreal poet Kaie Kellough takes us on a tour of his chosen home. Filmmaker: Craig Desson

The Next Chapter12:00Bertrand Bickersteth on his top three subversive explorer books

Bertrand Bickersteth on books that flip the script on traditional explorer narratives.

Cinq a Six54:00Artisic Director Mike Payette and Novelist Kaie Kellough share their music playlists

Mike Payette is the new Artistic Director of Geordie Productions and Kaie Kellough calls himself a word-sound systemizer. Both share personal stories behind their music picks!

Other books by Kaie Kellough