The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships

Award-winning author Ali Bryan’s The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships blends the offbeat humor and warmth of Schitt’s Creek with the wit and grit of Mostly Dead Things and follows five people who discover love, second chances, and newfound hope as the town’s biggest night of the year spirals into chaos.

A year after forest fires sweep through the town of Crow Valley and claim the life of Dale Jepson—karaoke legend, local prison guard, and “all-around good guy”—the community holds a karaoke competition. But when a convicted arsonist escapes from nearby Crow Valley Correctional, the residents learn there’s more on the line than a trip to the National Karaoke Championships. Marriages are at stake, jobs are jeopardized, sobrieties threatened, and second chances start to slip away as the community is forced, once again through misfortune, to rally together to save themselves and one another.

Told from alternating POVs, each with an intimate connection to the deceased Dale, The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships is a story about the fires we all fight in life—from the smoldering embers to the blazing infernos—and how, ultimately, there is dignity in the struggle to keep singing, to keep fighting, to keep going, to keep living no matter how high the flames get.

About the Author

Ali Bryan is a writer based in Calgary, Alberta. Her first novel, Roost, won a Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and was an official selection of One Book Nova Scotia. Her second novel, The Figgs, was released in 2018 and was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. She won the 2020 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story. She is a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Emerging Artist recipient. Her debut YA novel, The Hill, was released in March 2021 from Dottir Press and was long-listed for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.