Canadian · b. 1987
Michael LaPointe is a Canadian novelist, critic, and journalist based in Toronto. Born in 1987, he studied English literature at the University of British Columbia before building a career writing about books and culture for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Times Literary Supplement; he also served for several years as a books columnist for The Paris Review. The Creep (2021), his debut novel, is a literary thriller that follows a magazine journalist whose habit of quietly embellishing her stories collides with a medical conspiracy she's determined to report straight. Set against the run-up to the Iraq War and the decline of print journalism, the book was praised by critics — including novelist Lauren Oyler — for disguising a serious meditation on truth-telling inside genre plotting reminiscent of John le Carre. LaPointe continues to write criticism and journalism alongside his fiction.