Readers can find a talking whale, God, and animal facts of all kinds in University of Iowa English professor Paige Lewis’s debut novel, “Canon.”

“Canon” will be published as a novel in traditional prose on May 19, but Lewis intended to write it as an epic poem in its initial drafts. 

“Canon” follows two heroes, Yara and Andrena, as they embark on a journey to win God’s favor. Yara is tasked with slaying the leader of the army of the Bad Guys, Dominic, while Andrenda aims to reach heaven to reunite with her mother. 

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Bestselling author of “The Fault in Our Stars” John Green, has praised the novel as a “scorchingly brilliant, wildly funny, and deeply moving epic.”

“I am really obsessed with reading epic poetry,” Lewis said. “I think it’s really fun. I like that there is a clear narrative; someone is going on a journey, and we will see whether or not they succeed in their mission as we read through the poem.”

Lewis spent a decade reading every epic poem they could find. As they started working on “Canon,” it morphed into something new. 

“The cantos became chapters,” they said. “It just kept getting bigger and bigger until now, it’s almost 500 pages, which is terrifying. I was really interested in the idea of mushing the genres together. But that’s the secret. I’m tricking everyone into reading an epic poem.”

The wait until May 19 is racked with anxiety for Lewis, but their husband, Kaveh Akbar, a fellow UI English professor, novelist, and poet, knows exactly what they are going through. 

Iranian American novelist and poet Akbar wrote the novel “Martyr!,” a 2024 finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times’s Ten Best Books of the Year. 

“I was racked with the same anxiety of reception,” he said. “Now on this side of it, I’m only excited. I just know how good Paige’s book is.”

The two met in graduate school at Florida State University and began building their relationship and writing experience together by writing a poem to each other every day. 

“I remember being so terrified of messing up and ruining this budding romance by writing a bad poem, but it ended up just leading into us being much more serious writers,” Lewis said. “We’re just constantly writing, and we haven’t stopped.”

Akbar said the two push and prune each other’s work to become the best drafts possible. 

“We are very different as readers, so I think we’re constantly cross-pollinating each other in ways that feel thrilling,” he said. “Paige is the first reader of all my work. Everything that I’ve ever published in my adult life has been made indelibly better by Paige’s reading.”

Lewis and Akbar said teaching at the UI gives the two the opportunity to grow as writers, not only drawing from each other, but also from the Iowa City literary community. 

“When I was finishing edits and still working on the final bits of Canon, I would go to a coffee shop in Iowa City,” Lewis said. “Other writers that were also at the coffee shop would kind of shuffle over and be like, ‘What are you working on? Are you a writer too?’ and they would be so encouraging.”

Akbar said Iowa City also helps facilitate his growth as a writer, saying it is the city with the greatest density of literary talent in the world. 

“Everyone and their dog here is a writer,” he said. “It’s just in the air. You hold a petri dish out, and instead of mold, it grows a novel.”

Loren Glass, chair of the UI English Department, said he is excited for the novel and has already preordered it. 

“The creative writing world has been sort of tracked by people who come, and they identify as poet or novelist or nonfiction, memoirist,” he said. “It’s very exciting to have someone who’s a double threat, so to speak.”

Glass said “Canon’s” blend of prose and epic poetry shows the direction the creative writing community is moving towards. 

“I’ve been talking to our faculty about ways to prepare our students for a career in writing,” he said. “I’ve been hearing more and more that writing in multiple genres is becoming more of an assumed aspect of the CV.”

Akbar said while readers can order “Canon” online on Amazon, buying a copy from Prairie Lights will set readers up with a signed copy and an animal drawing of the reader’s choice. The novel launches on Lewis’s birthday. 

“It’ll be a strange thing to have those two connected,” Lewis said. “I’m going to try to guilt people into buying copies as a birthday present.”