Bestselling Canadian author Nita Prose, known for The Maid (2022), The Mystery Guest (2023), and recently published The Maid’s Secret (2025) captivated close to 70 guests present at the Frank Kinnaird Community Centre in Russell on Tuesday, October 7, during an evening of conversation, audience Q&A, and book signing hosted by the Township of Russell Public Library.
Despite the heavy rain, readers filled the room to hear Prose share insights into her creative journey, her beloved protagonist Molly the maid, and the power of storytelling.
Prose began warmly, expressing gratitude for the readers who braved the heavy rain. “A book exists the moment it’s set on a page, but it comes into being when readers bring it to life. I see the reader-author relationship as a kind of partnership.”
Prose shared that The Maid was born from an unexpected moment while attending a London book fair. Returning to her hotel room, she startled the maid cleaning, an encounter that sparked the creation of her main character, Molly, a socially awkward hotel room attendant who becomes entangled in a murder mystery.
“It’s such an intimate and invisible job to be a room maid,” Prose recalled. “She’d been cleaning my room for days so she knew everything about me. She knew the clothes I wore, the medicines I took, if someone had been in my bed the night before. She knew it all and yet I knew nothing about her.”
Her talk blended humour, sincerity, and reflection on how fiction can reveal deeper truths about human experience. Prose explained that while she never intended to become a novelist, having worked for years as an editor, her storytelling instincts took over after that fateful inspiration.
Prose also shared her belief that The Maid series are about more than mystery.
“We all know what it’s like to feel like an outsider, like we just don’t belong. We’ve all felt awkward in some social situation. We’ve all been disillusioned by a serial charmer who turns out to be all frog and no prince. We’ve all experienced the aching pain of loss and grief. If you see a little bit of yourself in Molly, the way I’ve come to see myself in her, it’s because she really is no different from any of us. Like her grandmother always says: we are all the same in different ways.”
The event closed with a lively Q&A and a book signing, where fans had the chance to meet the author in person.
