Do You Remember Being Born?: A Novel

Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaelss moving, innovative and deeply felt novel about an aging poet who agrees to collaborate with a Big Tech companys poetry AI, named Charlotte Marian Ffarmer is a world-renowned poet and a legend in the makingbut only now, at 75 years old, is she beginning to believe in the security of her successes. Unfortunately, a poets accomplishments dont necessarily translate to capital, and as her adult son struggles to buy his first home, her confidence in her choices begins to fray. Marians pristine life of mindfor which shes sacrificed nearly all personal relationships, from romance to friendship to motherhoodhas come at a cost. Then comes a cryptic invitation from the Tech Company. Come to California, the invitation beckons, and write with a machine. The Companys lucrative offerfor Marian to co-author a poem in a historic partnership with their cutting-edge poetry bot, named Charlottechafes at everything she believes about artmaking as an individual pursuit . . . yet, its a second chance she cant resist. And so to California she goes, a sell-out and a skeptic, for an encounter that will unsettle her life, her work and even her understanding of kinship. Both a love letter to and interrogation of the nature of language, art, labor, capital, family, and community, Do You Remember Being Born? is Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaelss empathetic response to some of the most disquieting questions of our timea defiant and joyful recognition that if were to survive meaningfully at all, creative legacy is to be reimagined and belonging to ones art must mean, above all else, belonging to the world.