Author Q&A with Jes Battis
Jes Battis' I Hate Parties was the winner of the Saskatchewan Book Awards’ Poetry Award Honouring Anne Szumigalski, Lammy Award finalist for LGBTQ+ Poetry and long-listed Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. In our fourth "Author Q&A" for National Poetry Month 2026, get to know Jes Battis through their celebrated book of poetry from Fall 2024.
From where did you write the majority of your book?
These poems were written in Vancouver, Chilliwack, Regina, Moose Jaw, in airports, in hotel rooms and in my adolescent bedroom.
Did anything surprise you during the writing process?
It was trickier to order the poems than I realized, and my editor really helped with this. There were poems I thought should be laid aside that he wanted to include, and vice versa. It was a collaborative process.
Do you have any routines or rituals that help you write?
In the morning, I like to write before I really start the day, when things have been percolating overnight. In the afternoons, if I can, I like to write in a cafe where I can listen to people connecting or failing to connect.
What books did you turn to while writing?
Poetry by Matthew Walsh, Medrie Purdham, Joelle Barron, Kayla Czaga, Ali Blythe, Chelsea Coupal, A. Light Zachary, Courtney Bates-Hardy, Tea Gerbeza and others.
Is there a sense, memory or feeling that embodies your book?
Probably uncertainty. The feeling when you were young and you slept over at a friend's house, but they woke up before you, which meant that you regained consciousness in an empty, unfamiliar room and you knew that you'd have to face the emotional gauntlet of walking into their alien kitchen and talking to their strange, uncanny parents. Maybe that.
If your book were a meal, what would it be?
Oatmeal.
What lives on your writing desk?
Family pictures, a negative scanner, fidget toys, Post-its and journals, cat hair.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Storytelling, not publication, is the heart of it. Work on telling honest, vulnerable stories rather than becoming "successful."
What is a fun fact about yourself?
I can't stand touching balloons, though I think they're quite pretty.
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Fifty poems to dance (awkwardly) between queer and anxious spaces.
Social anxiety runs through I Hate Parties like a current. Recorded on deliberately shaky media, this collection offers the B-side of growing up queer, autistic and nonbinary. From Scruff dates to mix tapes, Jes Battis cruises (and crashes) through wild feelings and minor catastrophes. Dipping readers into a world of missed connections, social disasters and life as a queer party that constantly surprises, Battis uses a light touch and neurodiverse prosody as they chronicle middle-grade queerness and a kind of meandering surreality. From difficult desires, panic attacks and environmental sensitivities, Battis weaves nineties metaphors with current discussions of neurodiversity and trans rights in Canada as they ruminate between past and present like a cat refusing to settle. I Hate Parties guides us through all the best and worst parties of our lives—to the secret room beyond, where being awkward is the one and only dress code.
Jes Battis (they/them) teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Regina. They’ve published poems in The Ex-Puritan, The Malahat Review, The Capilano Review and Poetry Is Dead, among other literary magazines. They’ve also published creative nonfiction in The Los Angeles Review of Books and Strange Horizons. They are the author of the Occult Special Investigator series (shortlisted for the Sunburst Award), the Parallel Parks series and, most recently, The Winter Knight with ECW.