"Junie is a debut novel of uncommon beauty, wisdom, and significance. It is a book about the neighbourhood that we remember as Hogan's Alley--about the caring relations, insistent expressivity, and fiercest joys that have defined Black communities, past and present, against the animus of cities. And it is a book, as movingly, about a complex mother/daughter relationship, and about the amending love between friends. Chelene Knight proves once again an exacting cartographer of both place and the heart." --David Chariandy, author of Brother

"Junie by Chelene Knight is a jewel of a novel. Set in the Hogan's Alley neighbourhood in Vancouver, Junie celebrates the Black community and its history with beauty, precision, and an irresistible protagonist, a dreamer and artist searching for love and belonging. I have spent many years hoping someone would write a novel about Hogan's Alley, a once-thriving neighbourhood that was razed for an overpass, and I am so happy that Chelene has written a book and characters that sparkle off the page and pay a gorgeous tribute to an often forgotten history." --Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Shadow List

"Junie is a triumphant and breathtakingly beautiful account of a largely neglected novelistic terrain--Hogan's Alley in Vancouver. It reminded me what is possible when an author of Knight's magnitude and talent creates a luminous sense of place." --Canadian Literature

"Junie takes readers to the under-documented world of writer Saidiya Hartman's errant Black women and girls. Their experiments in living freely--as singers, nightclub owners and artists; as mothers and daughters; as members of a small, tight-knit Black community--are tales of "the beauty of black ordinary," as Hartman writes in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Outside of Hogan's Alley and the East End, these girls and women are surveilled and threatened, but within it, they can be their flawed and fantastic selves." --The Globe and Mail

"Bracing, intimate, Junie explores what it means to be young, black and gifted in 1930s Vancouver. Through the eyes of the budding artist, the thriving and electric community of Hogan's Alley comes alive in all its vibrancy and splendour. This is a vivid, indelible world, one made more poignant by its coming loss." --Esi Edugyan, two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of Washington Black and Half-Blood Blues

"Chelene Knight's poignant and enchanting novel immerses us in a reverie of 1930s Hogan's Alley--the storied Black neighbourhood in East End Vancouver. The main character, Junie, is as dreamy and driven as any classic coming-of-age heroine--Francie Nolan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn springs to mind. Despite poverty and the unkindness of a bitter, disillusioned mother, Junie discovers wisdom and artistic inspiration in the beautiful complexity of her community--even as she fully embraces her racial and sexual identity. Page by page, we grow fonder of this compelling young Black woman who ultimately wins our compassion, delight, and respect." --Donna Bailey Nurse, literary critic

"Fittingly for a coming of age story, Junie's challenges and growth are Junie's central concerns. Knight captures her as keenly observant and wonderfully conflicted. She aches with yearning, intuiting -- if not yet able to name -- places and roles where her adult self will be fulfilled." --The British Columbia Review

"In Junie, Knight explores the complex emotions existing between mothers and daughters while highlighting a long-lost corner of Canada in the 1930s. She uses a poetic narrative to shed light on each of the four women's fragile dreams vulnerable to being crushed by the hard world in which they live." --Winnipeg Free Press

"Packed with history and heart, this is one great debut novel." --Vancouver Sun

"The picture Knight paints of Hogan's Alley is vibrant and complex. The place comes back to life in this novel. With Junie as our wise and wide-eyed guide, it's hard to miss the magic in this lost community, and even harder to accept that it's gone." --Harrison Mooney, author of Invisible Boy: A Memory of Self Discovery

Junie has been longlisted for the 2024 edition of CBC's Canada Reads
Junie by Chelene Knight has won the 2023 City of Vancouver Book Award.
Junie by Chelene Knight is being adapted for a ten-part television series.