In Shifting Baseline Syndrome, Aaron Kreuter asks the hard questions: will the Anthropocene have a laugh track? Is it okay to marry your eighteenth cousin? How different would the world look from outside the life-frame of the human? What is it like to have an acid trip in a portapotty? Is it the end . . . of Earth? Of capitalism? Of television?

Throughout Kreuter's sophomore collection, the TV remote is never far.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome is both searching and searing, veering between satire and sincerity, history and prophecy, and human and non-human worlds. As these clash ecstatically with loathing—and with the end looming—Kreuter demonstrates why we'll keep doing what we've always done: hoping, for once, that the series finale will be good. (From University of Regina Press)

Shifting Baseline Syndrome is a finalist for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. The winner will be announced on Nov. 16, 2022.

Karon Kreuter is the Toronto author of the short story collection You and Me, Belonging and the poetry collection Arguments for Lawn Chairs. You and Me, Belonging won The Miramichi Reader's 2019 "The Very Best Of!" award for short fiction, and was shortlisted for a Vine Award for Jewish Literature in the fiction category.