Fiction

Erika T. Wurth's White Horse is a gritty, vibrant debut novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit.

Some people are haunted in more ways than one.

Kari James, Urban Native, is a fan of heavy metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and dive bars. She spends most of her time at her favorite spot in Denver, the White Horse. When her cousin Debby finds an old family bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, it inadvertently calls up both her mother’s ghost and a monstrous entity, and her willful ignorance about her past is no longer sustainable…

Haunted by visions of her mother and hunted by this mysterious creature, Kari must search for what happened to her mother all those years ago. Her father, permanently disabled from a car crash, can’t help her. Her Auntie Squeaker seems to know something but isn’t eager to give it all up at once. Debby’s anxious to help, but her controlling husband keeps getting in the way. Kari’s journey toward a truth long denied by both her family and law enforcement forces her to confront her dysfunctional relationships, thoughts about a friend she lost in childhood, and her desire for the one thing she’s always wanted but could never have.

Reviews
“It’s metal to the end, it’s Denver to the core, it’s Native without trying, there’s ghosts, there’s blood, there’s roller coasters, and there’s about a thousand cigarettes smoked. What else can you ask for in a novel?” —Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians

"This ghost story is a perfect example of new wave horror that will also satisfy fans of classic Stephen King." —Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic

Additional Information
320 pages | 6.55" x 9.55" | Hardcover

An Indigenous resistance historiography, poetry that interrogates the colonial violence of the archive

Whitemud Walking is about the land Matthew Weigel was born on and the institutions that occupy that land. It is about the interrelatedness of his own story with that of the colonial history of Canada, which considers the numbered treaties of the North-West to be historical and completed events. But they are eternal agreements that entail complex reciprocity and obligations. The state and archival institutions work together to sequester documents and knowledge in ways that resonate violently in people’s lives, including the dispossession and extinguishment of Indigenous title to land.

Using photos, documents, and recordings that are about or involve his ancestors, but are kept in archives, Weigel examines the consequences of this erasure and sequestration. Memories cling to documents and sometimes this palimpsest can be read, other times the margins must be centered to gain a fuller picture. Whitemud Walking is a genre-bending work of visual and lyric poetry, non-fiction prose, photography, and digital art and design.

Awards

• 2023 Indigenous Voices Awards Co-Winner: Published Poetry in English

Additional Information
144 pages | 5.75" x 8.50" | Paperback

The title of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It holds a double meaning that teasingly suggests the play can please all tastes. But is that possible? With his subversive updating of the Bard’s classic, Indigenous creator and cultural provocateur Cliff Cardinal seeks to find out. The show exults in bawdy humour, difficult subject matter, and raw emotion; Cardinal is not one to hold back when it comes to challenging delicate sensibilities.

Reviews
“It is anarchic and tender and seething and raw. And important for us now.” — Istvan Dugalin, Istvan Reviews

“Unlike any other production of the play, past or future.” — Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.37" x 8.38" | Paperback

In his commanding poetry debut, Wolf Sonnets, R. P. LaRose undoes the sonnet's classical constraints, retooling the form for current political circumstances. Packed with family lore, these poems reflect on how deeply we can trust the terms we use to construct our identity. A proud citizen of the Métis Nation, LaRose even questions his right to identify as such: "I was made in someone else's home," he writes. Wolf Sonnets is verse obsessed with names, infinity, numbers, categories, and interconnectedness. Depicting his ancestors as wolves--symbols of survival and protection--LaRose brings fresh insight to his wider poetic project: castigating the inequality, greed, and racism inherent to colonialism.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.00" x 7.50" | Paperback

Poets, both settler and Indigenous, pay tribute to trees through reflections on the past, connections to the present, and calls for the protection of our future.

In Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect remaining ancient giants and restore uncolonized spaces.

Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets, several of whom have attended the recent Fairy Creek blockades and still others who defended BC's old growth trees in Clayoquot Sound nearly 30 years ago.

Contributors include ninth Parliamentary Poet Laureate Louise Bernice Halfe-Sky Dancer, GG winner Arleen Paré, Canadian icon bill bissett, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Eve Joseph, ReLit Award winner Patrick Friesen, Joy Kogawa, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Harold Rhenisch, Jay Ruzesky, John Barton, Kate Braid, Kim Trainor, Kim Goldberg, Pamela Porter, Patricia and Terence Young, Russell Thornton, Sonnet L’Abbé, Susan McCaslin, Susan Musgrave, Tom Wayman, Trevor Carolan, Yvonne Blomer, Zoe Dickinson and the late Pat Lowther.

Reviews
"This anthology grounds us in the earth's daily miracles, also known as trees, reminding us not to take them for granted. These poems acknowledge how we rely on and are part of a life force much bigger and wiser than us, giving us glimpses into the sacredness that trees make as they unconditionally transform sunlight into 'nourishing air.' From love to grief to gratitude to awe, this collection gives us lessons in the language of trees, crucial lexicons with which to navigate climate emergency." -Rita Wong, activist-poet, author of Current, Climate: The Poetry of Rita Wong

"In this eclectic grove of poems written and gathered on the body of trees, poets inflect, root, bend towards the mythopoetic, listening with love to arboreality, walking the path towards tree immersion. 'Make no mistake, I saw them relax their limbs and droop. Settling into their dreams.' A language that will always mystify and sustain us. Enjoy this collection and touch wood. 'tree, tell me what have you done with death.' 'today i ate chainsaws for breakfast.'" -Mona Fertig, editor of Love of the Salish Sea Islands and 111 West Coast Literary Portraits

"The tree is in the midst of an intellectual renaissance, judging by all the books on the lifeways, politics and communicative tendencies of networked forests. But poets have always been a People of the Tree, and the arboreal fund gathered in Worth More Standing covers the roots and branches of the entwined process of 'becoming both human and tree.' Our fate and the fate of forests have never been more entangled. This is a gorgeous and necessary collection, to be returned to again and again."-Governor General's Award-nominated poet Stephen Collis

"A masterpiece in cultural diversity unified with a call to action, Worth More Standing is a celebratory awakening to all Earth Citizens to see trees as far more valuable than in board feet of lumber. Our unified purpose must be to honour the old growth as we would our ancestors. Such forests and trees have been with us as long as we have been human. Their destruction means the loss of an essential component of our humanity." -Paul Stamets, award-winning mycologist, author, and bee protector

Additional Information
240 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback 

Authenticity Note: Not all of this work's contributors are Indigenous.

You Might Be Sorry You Read This is a stunning debut, revealing how breaking silences and reconciling identity can refine anger into something both useful and beautiful. A poetic memoir that looks unflinchingly at childhood trauma (both incestuous rape and surviving exposure in extreme cold), it also tells the story of coming to terms with a hidden Indigenous identity when the poet discovered her Métis heritage at age 38. This collection is a journey of pain, belonging, hope, and resilience. The confessional poems are polished yet unpretentious, often edgy but humorous; they explore trauma yet prioritize the poet’s story. Honouring the complexities of Indigenous identity and the raw experiences of womanhood, mental illness, and queer selfhood, these narratives carry weight. They tell us “You need / only be the simple / expression of the divine / intent / that is your life.” There is a lifetime in these poems.

Reviews
"Michelle Poirier Brown’s first collection of poetry is accomplished and gripping. In her five-decade story, perceptions, denial, emotional embroilments and poignant tenderness are peeled back and examined. As the narrative builds, we encounter the sheer alchemical power of poetry. This is rare. You Might Be Sorry You Read This will change you." — Betsy Warland, Bloodroot—Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss

“One of the functions of poetry is to make you uncomfortable.” This epigraph, by Pádraig Ó Tuama, begins Michelle Poirier Brown’s debut collection—a collection that intends, unapologetically, to discomfort the reader. With unflinching precision and the exactness of a fine poet’s eye, Poirier Brown challenges her readers to encounter not only her childhood trauma but, ultimately, the power of her self—her late-discovered Métis identity, her navigation of PTSD, her unwillingness to settle for less than the truth. In the final poem, “Self-Portrait of the Poet,” she concludes, “go ahead. look. / Look as long as you like.” Invitation or command, it’s a hard look Poirier Brown offers. It may make readers uncomfortable. But they won’t be sorry.” —Laura Apol, author of A Fine Yellow Dust

Educator Information
Keywords / Themes: Identity, Trauma, Pain, Resilience, Family, Métis, Indigenous.

Table of Contents

1 The Father I Had
3 God Was a Baby
4 A Child’s Book of Holy Services
6 Her Breath on My Face
8 Other Side of the Glass
10 Effect on Her Throat
11 The House on Strathnaver Avenue
15 Mothers Who Know
16 The Thing About Snow
22 Photograph
23 Under the Covers
25 The Girls I Grew Up With Are Everywhere
27 Short Change
28 After the Test
29 Walk on the Left-Hand Side
30 5:53 PM
32 A Perspective on Women
33 Collard Greens
34 Lasts
36 I’m Allowed to Have Whatever Kind of Father I Want
38 Intimacy
39 On the Porch
41 At Times, My Teeth Chatter
about face
46 What It’s Like to Have My Face
47 Understanding My Face
52 Wake
54 A Fragile Defiance
55 Smoke
57 Winnipeg Trip
59 Commitment
61 Two Mornings, 2018
63 Boxed
64 Those I Call Friends
66 Duck Ugly
67 Beneficiaries of a Genocide
69 Slow
70 Sometimes You Learn Things Quite Late in the Game
72 Something Purple
75 what it is like to be this extreme and appear normal
78 The Other Grandmother
80 Self-Portrait of the Poet
83 addendum
87 poetic statement
90 acknowledgements

Additional Information
104 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

J. R. Bull’s debut poetry book, (h)in(d)sight 2020, is the first in the Spir(itu)al Connection Collection. Julie’s lyrical and whimsical use of language provides ponderings for readers as they are taken on a journey of self-discovery. Part - memoir, manifesto, and musings, (h)in(d)sight 2020 is an inward journey and an outward Call to Action. A heart and soul voyage toward decolonization of the mind. Challenging the status quo and perceived societal norms, (h)in(d)sight 2020 demonstrates moving forward, together.

Additional Information
58 Pages | Paperback

20.12m: A Short Story Collection of a Life Lived as a Road Allowance Métis celebrates and acknowledges the humble living conditions of Métis Road Allowance families and it exemplifies their grit and tenacity to survive and indeed succeed in the face of so many hardships. “20.12m” refers to the narrow width of many of the road allowances throughout the prairies. This unoccupied crown land became one of the meagre options for many impoverished Métis families as so few owned land.

In this passionate coming of age book, Arnolda Dufour Bowes honours the true-life experiences of her father, Arnold Charles Dufour, a resident of the Punnichy, Saskatchewan Road Allowance community. The strength of the oral tradition has kept these stories solidly in place in Arnolda’s memory. Weaving true elements with those drawn from her own creativity, these five engaging stories share a lived experience that is little-known to most Canadians. This collection of cherished remembrances of this Métis family will also strongly resonate with many other Métis families who lived similar lives. In keeping with the family focus, Arnolda’s sister, Andrea Haughian, skillfully complements these poignant stories with expressive illustrations, which both honour and richly portray road allowance life.

Educator Information
Recommended by publisher for secondary, post-secondary, and adult readers.

Additional Information
Paperback

In September 1921, a young Inupiat woman named Ada Blackjack traveled to Wrangel Island, 200 miles off the Arctic Coast of Siberia, as a cook and seamstress, along with four professional explorers. The expedition did not go as planned. When a rescue ship finally broke through the ice two years later, she was the only survivor.

Diane Glancy discovered Blackjack’s diary in the Dartmouth archives and created a new narrative based on the historical record and her vision of this woman’s extraordinary life. She tells the story of a woman facing danger, loss, and unimaginable hardship, yet surviving against the odds where four “experts” could not. Beyond the expedition, the story examines Blackjack’s childhood experiences at an Indian residential school, her struggles as a mother and wife, and the faith that enabled her to survive alone on a remote island in the Arctic Sea.

Glancy’s creative telling of this heroic tale is a high mark in her award-winning hybrid investigations of suffering, identity, and Native American history.

Reviews
“This is not a reconstruction; it is symbiosis as an act of respect and dignity. As Diane Glancy 'ventriloquizes' Ada into a truth of words—written, typed, spoken, thought—she speaks the paradoxical truth of acts of writing as self-witness: 'I am hurting when I am writing.’ Isolation becomes revelation. The spiritual driftwood becomes a testament of sacred connection and a claiming back of voice.”—John Kinsella

“The shifting of ice. Written letters become elk, an orange is a moon, an owl is a blank page, and the stunning survival in this Arctic landscape redefines the question, “What is rescue?” Diane Glancy hears the spirits, the words beneath the words. She knows the language of scars as she honors the life of Ada Blackjack in this visionary telling of the moving world.”—Jan Beatty

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

Brian Isaac's powerful debut novel All the Quiet Places is the coming-of-age story of Eddie Toma, an Indigenous (Syilx) boy, told through the young narrator's wide-eyed observations of the world around him.

It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch the sunset and listening to the wind in the grass. The boys learn from Ray's funny and dark stories. But when tragedy strikes, Eddie returns home grief-stricken, confused, and lonely.

Eddie's life is governed by the decisions of the adults around him. Grace is determined to have him learn the ways of the white world by sending him to school in the small community of Falkland. On Eddie's first day of school, as he crosses the reserve boundary at the Salmon River bridge, he leaves behind his world. Grace challenges the Indian Agent and writes futile letters to Ottawa to protest the sparse resources in their community. His father returns to the family after years away only to bring chaos and instability. Isabel and Ray join them in an overcrowded house. Only in his grandmother's company does he find solace and true companionship.

In his teens, Eddie's future seems more secure—he finds a job, and his long-time crush on his white neighbour Eva is finally reciprocated. But every time things look up, circumstances beyond his control crash down around him. The cumulative effects of guilt, grief, and despair threaten everything Eddie has ever known or loved.

All the Quiet Places is the story of what can happen when every adult in a person's life has been affected by colonialism; it tells of the acute separation from culture that can occur even at home in a loved familiar landscape. Its narrative power relies on the unguarded, unsentimental witness provided by Eddie.

Awards

• 2022 Indigenous Voices Awards winner

Reviews
"What a welcome debut. Young Eddie Toma’s passage through the truly ugly parts of this world is met, like an antidote, or perhaps a compensation, by his remarkable awareness of its beauty. This is a writer who understands youth, and how to tell a story." —Gil Adamson is the winner of the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for Ridgerunner

"All the Quiet Places is a deftly crafted, evocative story about the trials of growing up Indigenous. Brian Thomas Isaac’s characters are complex, relatable, and overall, beautifully human." —Waubgeshig Rice is the bestselling author of Moon of the Crusted Snow

"All the Quiet Places is the kind of novel that works its way into your soul. Essentially, it's a tale of childhood, all the wonders and tragedies, that befall a young boy on an Okanagan Reserve in the middle of the last century. Familiar, yet unique, Eddie's story will captivate the reader. The best compliment I could bestow on this book is. . . I wish it was one or two chapters longer. I wanted more." —Drew Hayden Taylor is from the Curve Lake First Nation and is the author of many books including Chasing Painted Horses

"On par with the brilliance of James Welch's Winter in The Blood and Ruby Slipperjack's Little Voice, Brian Thomas Isaac has given us a startling read that'll live wire your soul and haunt you for a good long while. Pure brilliance. Wow." —Richard Van Camp is the author of The Lesser Blessed and Moccasin Square Gardens

Educator Information
Keywords: Coming of Age; Own Voices; Indigenous

Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools resource collection as being useful for grades 11 and 12 for English Language Arts and Social Studies.

Additional Information
288 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Geronimo is probably the second-best-known Indigenous name, after Pocahontas. But the reality of the great Apache warrior's fate is little remembered. In At Geronimo's Grave, Armand Garnet Ruffo uses the Apache warrior's life as a metaphor for the lives of many of the abandoned Indigenous people on this continent. With affection and concern, award-winning poet Armand Garnet Ruffo uses straightforward language to examine the lives and experiences of people who struggle to make their way in a world that has no place for them, starting with Geronimo himself. Feared for his once-great prowess, the warrior horseman was reduced to wearing a top hat and riding in an early Ford Model T car, a grim caricature of assimilation into the dominant culture. The bitter irony of this fate echoes through the personal poems in At Geronimo's Grave. This collection is a love letter to a people trapped in the slow-moving vehicle of another culture that is taking them nowhere.

Reviews
"Armand Ruffo spins silky songs out of everyday language. They thread the separations between the dead and the living, between the heirs of Columbus and his 'Indians,' between families and their children, joining the awkward edges always with hope, often with beauty." – Daniel David Moses

Additional Information
116 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback 

Daniel is a young Métis man searching for a way to exist in a world of lateral violence, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. Facing obstacles of his own at every turn, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends, teachers and lovers. He finds hope in the inherent connection of Indigenous Peoples to the land, and the permanence of culture, language and ceremony in the face of displacement.

Set in Edmonton, this story considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive—from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders, restaking land claims and ultimately, triumph. Based on Papaschase and Métis oral histories and lived experience, Conor Kerr’s debut novel will not soon be forgotten.

Reviews
"Kerr has given voice to the reality of Edmonton’s homeless Indigenous youth. People who survive inside of the shadows of what used to be called The City of Champions. The realities of Indigenous youth trying to survive the child welfare system in a city that prides itself on being winners of everything from sport to industry are placed on display. What Kerr has given to us through his humour, and his own lived experience as a Métis hunter and writer, is a fresh voice and one that we will be hearing from for many years to come." — Norma Dunning, author of Tainna, August 2021

"Conor Kerr’s short story collection, Avenue of Champions, is a map of amiskwaciwâskahikan with a host of characters tenderly placed and intricately weaved together. This book firmly held me in its grasp from the very first story and didn’t let go until the book's final lines, at which point I realized my heart had been in my throat the whole time, aching. Like saskatoonberries staining kohkom’s palms, these characters and this novel will live in your skin long past when you are through reading its pages." — Jessica Johns, author of how not to spill, August 2021

Additional Information
224 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

A gender-fluid trickster character leaps from Cree stories to inhabit this raucous and rebellious new work by award-winning poet Louise Bernice Halfe.

There are no pronouns in Cree for gender; awâsis (which means illuminated child) reveals herself through shapeshifting, adopting different genders, exploring the English language with merriment, and sharing his journey of mishaps with humor, mystery, and spirituality. Opening with a joyful and intimate Foreword from Elder Maria Campbell, awâsis – kinky and dishevelled is a force of Indigenous resurgence, resistance, and soul-healing laughter.

If you’ve read Halfe’s previous books, prepared to be surprised by this one. Raging in the dark, uncovering the painful facts wrought on her and her people’s lives by colonialism, racism, religion, and residential schools, she has walked us through raw realities with unabashed courage and intense, precise lyricism. But for her fifth book, another choice presented itself. Would she carve her way with determined ferocity into the still-powerful destructive forces of colonialism, despite Canada’s official, hollow promises to make things better? After a soul-searching Truth and Reconciliation process, the drinking water still hasn’t improved, and Louise began to wonder whether inspiration had deserted her.

Then awâsis showed up—a trickster, teacher, healer, wheeler-dealer, shapeshifter, woman, man, nuisance, inspiration. A Holy Fool with their fly open, speaking Cree, awâsis came to Louise out of the ancient stories of her people, from the quiet words of the Elders, from community input through tears and laughter, from her own aching heart and her three-dimensional dreams. Following awâsis’s lead, Louise has flipped her blanket over, revealing a joking, mischievous, unapologetic alter ego—right on time.

Reviews
“There really isn’t any template for telling stories as experienced from within Indigenous minds. In her book awâsis – kinky and dishevelled, Cree poet Louise Bernice Halfe (Sky Dancer) presents a whole new way to experience story poems. It’s kinda like she writes in English but thinks in Cree. Lovely, revealing, funny, stunning. A whole new way to write!” — Buffy Sainte-Marie

“Louise Halfe knows, without question, how to make miyo-iskotêw, a beautiful fire with her kindling of words and moss gathered from a sacred place known only to her, to the Old Ones. These poems, sharp and crackling, are among one of the most beautiful fires I’ve ever sat beside.” — Gregory Scofield, author of Witness, I Am

“Louise makes awâsis out of irreverent sacred text. The darkness enlightens. She uses humor as a scalpel and sometimes as a butcher knife, to cut away, or hack off, our hurts, our pain, our grief and our traumas. In the end we laugh and laugh and laugh.” — Harold R. Johnson, author of Peace and Good Order: The Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada

“This is all about Indigenizing and reconciliation among ourselves. It’s the kind of funny, shake up, poking, smacking, and farting we all need while laughing our guts out. It’s beautiful, gentle and loving.” — Marie Campbell, author of Halfbreed (from the Foreword)

Additional Information
104 pages | 5.75" x 8.50"

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.

Reviews
“Rebecca Roanhorse… [is one] of the Indigenous novelists reshaping North American science fiction, horror and fantasy — genres in which Native writers have long been overlooked.” — The New York Times

"The pages turn themselves. A beautifully crafted setting with complex character dynamics and layers of political intrigue? Perfection. Mark your calendars, this is the next big thing." — Kirkus, starred review

"A a razor-sharp examination of politics, generational trauma, and the path to redemption...Roanhorse strikes a perfect balance between powerful worldbuilding and rich thematic exploration as the protagonists struggle against their fates. Fantasy fans will be wowed." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Educator & Series Information
This is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky Series.

Additional Information
496 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

The voices of Blue Marrow sing out from the past and the present. They are the voices of the Grandmothers, both personal and legendary. They share their wisdom, their lives, their dreams. They proclaim the injustice of colonialism, the violence of proselytism, and the horrors of the residential school system with an honesty that cuts to the marrow. Speaking in both English and Cree, these are voices of hopefulness, strength, and survivance. Blue Marrow is a tribute to the indomitable power of Indigenous women of the past and of the present day.

Educator Information
This is the 3rd Edition of this book.  More than twenty years since its first publication, this critically acclaimed collection is available in a redesigned edition, including an all-new interview with its celebrated author, Louise B. Halfe - Sky Dancer.

Some of the text is written in Cree.

Additional Information
120 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | paperback | 8 illustrations