There are announcements that make you smile, and then there are those that confirm you’re exactly where you need to be.

Canadian writers Meredith Hambrock, Susin Nielsen, and Mark Waddell have just made the shortlist for the 2026 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. With a $25,000 purse, this isn’t just an award—it’s a national institution, honouring the legacy of humourist Stephen Leacock since 1947.

Meredith is in the running for her razor-sharp novel, She’s A Lamb!. It follows Jessamyn St. Germain, an actor fueled by the absolute certainty that she is destined for superstardom.The novel is also a brilliant homage to The Sound of Music—the exact show Jessamyn is dying to star in at a Vancouver theatre. While the world might see her as delusional, the book tracks her relentless quest, brilliantly exposing the sheer depths she’ll sink to for her shot.

It’s incisively funny, wildly smart, and the momentum doesn’t stop on the page. The book is already slated for a feature film adaptation by 4am Film Studios, with the screenplay adapted by none other than Meredith herself. Talk about total creative control.

Meredith is a novelist and television writer. She’s no stranger to the literary spotlight—her story You Should Go Over There was longlisted for the 2016 CBC Short Story Prize, and she’s also the author of the novel Other People’s Secrets.

Come June, the finalists will be flown out to Orillia, Ontario—the lakeside town that hosted Leacock’s summer estate. The winner will be announced live at a big event right there on the grounds.

Between now and takeoff, Meredith is tackling some very important prep: hitting the shops to curate the perfect wardrobe, and figuring out exactly which excerpts she wants to read to the crowd.

We can’t wait to see how this plays out. Stay tuned.

See the review in the Literary Review of Canada (Crushing It).

We are proud to announce the latest additions to our roster—an elite group of creators, XR artisans, and world-builders redefining narratives and technology.

INVR.SPACE | Germany’s Prolific Immersive Studio
INVR.SPACE joins our roster to lead the charge in immersive experiences. We are happy to collaborate with INVR.Space giving us a sure footprint into the “Dôme” circuit and high-end XR distribution.

Monte Albers de Leon | Prestige Series
Harvard-educated attorney, with over two decades of high-stakes legal experience, Monte Albers de Leon has made a definitive transition to full-time narrative development. He is currently developing a high-profile collaboration with Shaun Redick and Yvette Yates Redick at Impossible Dream Entertainment, alongside a new series and feature projects with Woolf+Lapin.

Nic Bourgeois | Electronics Incarnate
At the intersection of experimentation and performance, Nic develops their own wearable digital instruments to liberate electronic music from its usual static nature. Their work—simultaneously raw and vulnerable—uses the body to explore queer and sensitive realities. Winner of the Gotfrit-Barlett Prize for Nœuds au ventre (2024), this Master’s candidate at the Université de Montréal has established themselves as a key figure in the digital arts, propelling an expressive physical presence into the heart of programmed logic, both in Canada and internationally.

New Voices
With the signing of Emily Roberson, Holly Richter-White, and Mark Alan Furney, Woolf+Lapin continues to prioritize voices that offer a visceral, intellectually rigorous perspective. These three creators exemplify a specific DNA: storytelling that is inherently cinematic, grounded in institutional knowledge, and unafraid of moral friction.

Emily Roberson: Lifestyles of Gods & Monsters is a retelling of Greek myth through the lens of modern celebrity rounding characters pursuing “escape velocity”.

Holly Richter-White: A RCMP member in Ottawa shaped by decades on the front lines of national and international security, Holly brings a forensic gaze to her feature Outgunned.

With more than twenty jury verdicts behind him, Mark Alan Furney crafts character-driven legal thrillers informed by his career as a public defender and prosecutor.

Paloma Dawkins | Symbiotic Frequencies
We are pleased to announce that Paloma Dawkins will participate in this year’s Forum at MUTEK. For the first time, the event unfolds across two adjoining cultural institutions: the Atrium et Studio-Théâtre des Grands Ballets and the Édifice Wilder – Espace danse.

Le vidéoclip « Mdē kuKu » du rappeur Komēdza a remporté le prix du jury (meilleur clip) lors de la 11e édition du Festival Courts d’un soir.

Crédits de l’œuvre :

Réalisation : Komēdza & Éloïse Lavictoire

Direction de la photographie : Mathis Martin

Sinclair Dubreuil & Stephan Dubreuil

How much of a book can you truly squeeze into a two-hour runtime? That question defines modern cinema, but we’re likely asking the wrong thing. It’s a strange irony: while 87% of the global population is literate, recreational reading is in a freefall. In the U.S. alone, daily reading for pleasure plummeted by 40% between 2003 and 2023—a steady, 3% annual decay.

So, Emily Brontë who? Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie kissing passionately? Yes, please. Hollywood has realized that books are an infinite source of material, but more importantly, they come with a “built-in audience”—a recurrent phrase in the industry today. Is it playing it safe or playing it smart? Whatever your answer, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Think back to the recent frenzy of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, or even further back to classics like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey. These were targeted at people who’d read the books, sure, but they appealed to everyone else too.

There is a specific art form in taking an imagined world and realizing it as a visual spectacle. Most people walking into the theater or streaming at home might not even know the movie was sourced from a book; to them, it’s just a new, exciting movie worth seeing for its artistic content. While some may go for new emerging voices à la Kane Parsons, the big studio slates seem to suggest that time-tested IPs is the “Safety Net” that makes the gamble worth taking. It’s an insurance policy written in ink.

Take the recent Wuthering Heights—a perfect example of an entertaining modern picture that somehow missed the mark of the book entirely. Brontë described Heathcliff as being of Lascar origin (modern-day Southeast Asia), yet we get trending heartthrob Jacob Elordi as the lead.

Wrong or right, it wasn’t the first time we’d seen a production’s reliance on casting whatever actor was currently ‘trending’ or part of the cultural zeitgeist, regardless of the character’s actual description. Nuances of race or even the current social landscape aside, for those who actually read the English gothic classic, the movie felt more “raunchy” than moving. The reality is that for many, Wuthering Heights will now be Emerald Fennell’s movie, her version, raunchiness and all, rather than Brontë’s book. Going down the Internet rabbit hole will have you read things like the movie is the worst thing to happen to Emily since she died of TB at 30. Ultimately, an adaptation—whatever its quality—is a testament to the original work’s aura and mystic power. That is never negligible. A classic stays alive precisely because it is breathing; it is kept vital by the very reinvention that is criticized.

We can level criticism at everything. But let’s ask: is Hollywood just banking on these adaptations to earn millions from pre-sold fans? Most of the time, yes. On an Excel sheet, it’s just sound business. But we at Woolf+Lapin know that it’s still up to the audience to decide if a movie actually works. Whether it’s an adaptation or not, the criteria remain the same: subject matter, cinematography, and even the soundtrack spell the difference between success and failure.

Look at Quebec’s hero, Denis Villeneuve. From our very own backyard, he adapted the critically acclaimed Incendies from the Wajdi Mouawad play, got an Oscar nod, and eventually launched an international career that led him to Frank Herbert’s Dune (wait a minute that’s another book yes?). Now it’s a massive franchise starring Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet.

So, where is this boom taking us next? In TV, it gave us Canada’s Heated Rivalry and just now Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. In movies, it’s Project Hail Mary and The Housemaids. Interestingly, while producers want “safer bets,” the Academy just awarded Ryan Coogler “Best Screenplay” for his original script (Sinners), proving that originality will always win. Meanwhile, A24 is mining the online pipeline for inspiration (see trailer for Backrooms)—taking us into unknown places reminiscent of dreams.

And we’re walking the walk. Our own Meredith Hambrock is currently adapting her 2025 novel, She’s a Lamb (ECW Press), with the team at 4am Film Studios. We’ve also just welcomed the brilliant Emily Roberson to the pack, who brought her hit Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters (Macmillan) along for the ride.

For writers, the opportunity is hiding in plain sight. Write a short story, a memoir, a graphic novel, a blog (wait, can we turn this sentence into an immersive dome experience?)—the format doesn’t matter and the IP doesn’t have to be famous yet. It just has to be the right story at the right moment.