Miriam Toews opens up about writing and grief in her new memoir, A Truce That is Not Peace

Miriam Toews’ new memoir features letters she wrote to her sister, who she lost to suicide in 2010.

Miriam Toews’s latest, A Truce That is Not Peace, is an attempt to answer an unanswerable question: Why does she write? The question comes in a letter from a foreign arts organization compiling answers from celebrated writers. Toews, of course, is highly accomplished: She has authored more than 10 books, won the Governor-General’s Award and been a Giller Prize finalist three times; the film version of her novel Women Talking won the 2023 Oscar for best adapted screenplay (by Sarah Polley).

So why does she write? In this new memoir, Toews dances around the inquiry as a way of brushing up against another, more important question: How is she to live through the grief of losing her sister