In an attention economy, controversy has value. It’s no exaggeration to say these political battles within CanLit now dominate the discussion of Canadian writers and writing. The “appropriation prize” controversy, for example, blew up in a journal that few people had ever heard of much less read, and yet it garnered an enormous amount of national media coverage. And, while Joseph Boyden is a bestselling, award-winning novelist, he is probably better known today for questions raised about whether or not he qualifies as an Indigenous author.