The Lit Room
Wednesday June 17th, 2026 with Susan Johnston
#31 Ellis Scott, Night Terminus (Dundurn Press, 2026)

Author Ellis Scott joins Susan to talk about his debut novel, Night Terminus. Through interconnected stories of grief, love, statelessness, and found family, Ellis Scott asks what it means to live on after catastrophe, and to keep writing your own ending. Publisher's description: "An evocative debut novel reflecting the determination and resilience of a gay diaspora as it faced extinction. Beginning with a chance encounter in 1985, an unnamed narrator embarks on a physical and spiritual sojourn over four decades. From a one-night stand in Paris with the troubled and enigmatic Louis; to Montreal, through a divided Europe, and into the Iranian desert with the sick yet determined Yuri; and finally to Provence, where he meets the gregarious but wistful Frank, the narrator encounters a cast of exiles, fugitives, rebels, and artists. In a journey across continents and decades, we watch the impacts of one of the greatest health crises of the last hundred years through the eyes of those who both survived it and must now remember those who didn’t. At once an odyssey through time and a love story to the narrator’s found family, this haunting, lyrical novel in five parts explores questions of grief, statelessness, and memory and is a meditation on survival in the age of AIDS."