Montreal publisher ends ties with Thélyson Orélien after AI findings

Montreal publisher Les Éditions du Boréal said on October 21, 2026 that it is ending its professional relationship with the Quebec writer Thélyson Orélien. In a statement, the house said it had concluded that artificial intelligence was used in writing his novel, and that it will not reprint C'était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die).

Orélien was born in 1988 in Gonaïves, Haiti, and writes fiction and poetry about memory, exile and belonging. The novel was published by Boréal in its general collection. Founded in 1963, the house describes itself as one of the main independent publishing houses in Quebec. The Daily Star has described the book as a dramatised version of Orélien's own life.

The dispute began in September. A little-known account on X accused Orélien of using AI, and he denied it the following Tuesday, according to Reuters. Canadian and French publishers initially stood by him. A French publisher of the novel told the New York Times that he had begun writing it in 2017 and finished a draft in 2019, before generative AI tools became widely available.

On September 26, France's Goncourt prize, a major literary award, dropped the novel after the accusations. The episode also prompted a debate about race, as News8000 reported.

In an opinion piece dated October 11, the New York Times said that Pangram, an AI-detection software, had shown parts of the novel to be up to "100 percent" AI-generated. The same piece identified Boréal as Orélien's Canadian publisher.

Two days later, Reuters reported that Orélien rejected the accusations that he used artificial intelligence to write the bestselling novel, and that he admitted to past plagiarism. Radio-Canada reported that he had claimed no sentence of the novel was created by an AI. On October 17, CBC reported, citing his publisher, that he had given up trying to prove the novel's origins.

Boréal's October 21 announcement said it had gathered all working versions of the novel and commissioned an in-depth external analysis of it. According to Le Devoir, that analysis found traces of AI tags in the metadata of certain documents. A second statement from the publisher, dated the same day, refers to "new elements" and repeats that the house is ending its relationship with Orélien.