adaptation of the book, directed by Sarah Polley and produced by and featuring Frances McDormand, was released in late 2022. Fight Night Toews' eighth novel, Fight Night, focuses on a multigenerational family of women living in Toronto: the feisty, tomboyish 9-year-old Swiv, her heavily pregnant mother (nicknamed Mooshie), and her spirited and extraordinarily lively grandmother Elvira. Recently expelled from school, Swiv helps her grandmother with bathing and chores, accompanies her around the city, and eventually travels with her to Fresno, California to meet members of their extended family. In exchange, Swiv learns about what it means to survive through the ups and downs of life, and of her grandmother's story of despair, betrayal, and stolen agency and joy. The novel's structure takes the form of a letter Swiv writes to her absent father about life in the close-knit (yet often dysfunctional) household. As Swiv records her thoughts and observations, Fight Night unspools the pain, laughter, and unconditional love in the three women's stories, as they speak to what it takes to fight – painfully, joyously, and ferociously – and survive in life. Personal Toews' father, Melvin C. Toews, suffered from bipolar disorder much of his life. He was an active and well-respected elementary school teacher who lobbied to establish Steinbach's first public library. After his death by suicide, the Steinbach Library Board opened the Melvin C. Toews Reading Garden on the grounds of the library he worked to create. Toews' older sister and only sibling, Marjorie, died by suicide in 2010, almost 12 years to the day after their father. Toews' partner is Erik Rutherford, the screenwriter for the 2021 film Charlotte. Her daughter Georgia Toews and son Owen Toews are both writers. Georgia's debut novel Hey, Good Luck Out There was published in 2022, while Owen's Stolen City: Racial Capitalism and the Making of Winnipeg was published in 2019. Bibliography Summer of My Amazing Luck, Turnstone Press, 1996, A Boy of Good Breeding, Vintage Canada, 1998, Swing Low: A Life (non-fiction), Vintage Canada, 2000, A Complicated Kindness, Knopf Canada, 2004, The Flying Troutmans, Knopf Canada, 2008, Irma Voth, Knopf Canada, 2011, All My Puny Sorrows, Knopf Canada, 2014, Women Talking, Knopf Canada, 2018, Fight Night, Knopf Canada, 2021, Filmography Selected awards and honours 1996 John Hirsch Award for Summer of My Amazing Luck 1998 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award for A Boy of Good Breeding 2000 Alexander