Check is a book of contemporary poetic satire about the groups that we inevitably form and their consequences: in-groups and out-groups and mutual suspicion. Sarah Tolmie writes about parents and teenagers, social media users, different kinds of writers, university professors, feminists, celebrities, pundits—each one in possession of a different truth and determined to defend it. Hatred and intolerance are always the province of other people, never ourselves. Check begins and ends with the premise that toleration is exceedingly difficult and exasperating; it should not be casually assumed, and failures in it are universal. (From McGill-Queen's University Press)

Sarah Tolmie is a professor, novelist and poet based in Waterloo, Ont. Her poetry collection The Art of Dying was shortlisted for the 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of the collection Trio.