Thea Lim's novel An Ocean of Minutes is on the Canada Reads 2019 longlist. The final five books and the panellists defending them will be revealed on Jan. 31, 2019.

The 2019 debates are happening on March 25-28, 2019 and will be hosted by Ali Hassan.

Thea Lim is a Singaporean-Canadian novelist and short story writer. She was the nonfiction editor for the Gulf Coast. Over the years, she has received artists' grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Her work has been published in various publications, including the Guardian, Salon and Grist.

In 2018, Lim released her debut, a speculative fiction novel entitled An Ocean of Minutes. She also wrote a novella called The Same Woman in 2007.

An Ocean of Minutes was on the shortlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

"I love alternate worlds. Science fiction is a useful and fruitful genre. It gives us the ability to talk about things that feel otherworldly and are beyond language, like contradictions that are deeply human but escape common expression — how we miss homelands we've never been to or feel a sense of loss toward things before they're gone.

"These are things that don't make logical sense but are such a huge part of our world. Being able to set stories in other worlds and places enables us to amplify those situations and explore them."