LGBTQ2S+

Godly Heathens is the first book in H.E. Edgmon's YA contemporary fantasy duology The Ouroboros, in which a teen, Gem, finds out they’re a reincarnated god from another world.

Maybe I have always just been bad at being human because I’m not one.

Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, Georgia. Known for being their peers’ queer awakening, Gem leans hard on charm to disguise the anxious mess they are beneath. The only person privy to their authentic self is another trans kid, Enzo, who’s a thousand long, painful miles away in Brooklyn.

But even Enzo doesn’t know about Gem’s dreams, haunting visions of magic and violence that have always felt too real. So how the hell does Willa Mae Hardy? The strange new girl in town acts like she and Gem are old companions, and seems to know things about them they’ve never told anyone else.

When Gem is attacked by a stranger claiming to be the Goddess of Death, Willa Mae saves their life and finally offers some answers. She and Gem are reincarnated gods who’ve known and loved each other across lifetimes. But Gem – or at least who Gem used to be - hasn’t always been the most benevolent deity. They’ve made a lot of enemies in the pantheon—enemies who, like the Goddess of Death, will keep coming.

It’s a good thing they’ve still got Enzo. But as worlds collide and the past catches up with the present, Gem will discover that everyone has something to hide.

Reviews
"Sharp as a blade, twice as vicious, and an outstretched hand all at once; a reminder to messy, angry kids that they can find their power no matter what they must do to survive. Absolutely unhinged and utterly unforgettable." - Andrew Joseph White, New York Times bestselling author of Hell Followed with Us

"This is the kind of book that changes young lives. The kind readers will force into their friends' hands and shout, 'Read this now!'. The kind where readers will fall in love with every character who is messy and sexy and terrible in their own way. The worldbuilding is fun and creative, the twists are satisfying, and it is super queer in the best way. There is plenty here to love. If only all the villain stories in YA could be this good!" - Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun

“Vile, nasty, ill-behaved queerness—and I LOVED it. Godly Heathens takes the evil stereotype of queers as monsters—particularly ones in trans bodies—and embraces monstrosity with power and agency. A country-fried horror extravaganza you cannot miss!” - Adam Sass, award-winning author of Surrender Your Sons and The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers

"Godly Heathens is as whip-smart as it is delightfully unhinged, oscillating between heart-pounding action, laugh-out-loud humor, and poignant discussions of identity. Paired with its baked-in layers of queer teen messiness, it's safe to say this series is off to an explosive start. Edgmon does not miss." - Kayla Cottingham, New York Times bestselling author of My Dearest Darkest

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for ages 14 to 19.

This book is the first in the YA contemporary fantasy duology The Ouroboros.

Subjects / Themes: Romance, LGBTQ+, Nonbinary, Seminole, Fantasy, Contemporary 

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.38" x 8.25" | Hardcover 

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him – about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up.

On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

Reviews
"Green Fuse Burning is an impressively vigorous fiction debut from a truly dynamic storyteller. Tiffany Morris has laid out a concise and creepy tale that mesmerizes as it weaves through several realms, from the tangible to the spiritual. I was captivated by the looming mystery and the striking imagery that carried me like a current to the story's monumental resolution. This book is a must-read in new speculative fiction!" - Waubgeshig Rice, author of Moon of the Turning Leaves

"Morris quietly dazzles and disquiets in this weird horror novella . . . Poetic and grotesque imagery drives the novella's horror, with fluid narration fostering a sense of disconnect and dread . . . This is a subtle and refreshing twist on the cabin in the woods trope." - Publishers Weekly starred review

"A verdant alienation seeps through every page as Morris reimagines the possibilities of decay, a desperate isolation scouring the mind to reveal a torrid, seething strangeness beneath, the inevitable reckoning gathering its strength below the calm surface of the pond." - Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold and The Handyman Method

Additional Information
112 pages | 6.12" x 9.03" | Paperback

In the Remixed Classics series, authors from marginalized backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lens to subvert the overwhelming cishet, white, and male canon. This queer YA reimagining of The Secret Garden subverts the cishet and white status quo of the original in a tale of family secrets wonderful and horrifying.

Mary Lennox didn’t think about death until the day it knocked politely on her bedroom door and invited itself in. When a terrible accident leaves her orphaned at fifteen, she is sent to the wilderness of the Georgian Bay to live with an uncle she's never met.

At first the impassive, calculating girl believes this new manor will be just like the one she left in Toronto: cold, isolating, and anything but cheerful, where staff is treated as staff and never like family. But as she slowly allows her heart to open like the first blooms of spring, Mary comes to find that this strange place and its strange people—most of whom are Indigenous—may be what she can finally call home.

Then one night Mary discovers Olive, her cousin who has been hidden away in an attic room for years due to a "nervous condition." The girls become fast friends, and Mary wonders why this big-hearted girl is being kept out of sight and fed medicine that only makes her feel sicker. When Olive's domineering stepmother returns to the manor, it soon becomes clear that something sinister is going on.

With the help of a charming, intoxicatingly vivacious Metis girl named Sophie, Mary begins digging further into family secrets both wonderful and horrifying to figure out how to free Olive. And some of the answers may lie within the walls of a hidden, overgrown and long-forgotten garden the girls stumble upon while wandering the wilds...

Reviews
"Racism, colonization, and a love of nature are central themes gracefully woven into the story. An aching and emotionally immersive queer romance, unhampered by homophobia, unfolds through lush imagery blended with poignant and elegant prose. A rich and verdant revival of a classic." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Educator & Series Information
This book is recommended for ages 13 to 18.

This book is part of the Remixed Classics series.

Additional Information
288 pages | 5.38" x 8.25" | Hardcover

Brandi Bird's frank, transcendent poetry explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory in this long-anticipated debut collection.

Brandi Bird's long-anticipated debut poetry collection, The All + Flesh, explores the concepts of health, language, place, and memory that connect its author to their chosen kin, blood relatives, and ancestral lands. By examining kinship in broader contexts, these frank, transcendent poems expose binaries that exist inside those relationships, then inspect and tease them apart in the hope of moving toward decolonial future(s). Bird's work is highly concerned with how outer and inner landscapes move and change within the confines of the English language, particularly the "I" of the self, a tradition of movement that has been lost for many who don't speak their Indigenous languages or live on their homelands. By exploring the landscapes the poet does inhabit, both internally and externally, Bird's poems seek to delve into and reflect their cultural lineages-specifically Saulteaux, Cree, and Métis-and how these transformative identities shape the person they are today.

I am made of centuries & carbohydrates
the development of my molars
the hunger the teeth grew
has been with me since childhood
I can't escape the mouths of others

Awards

• 2024 Poetry in English, Indigenous Voices Awards 

Reviews
"Since hearing Brandi Bird at a reading in a park in summertime recite the lines, "I know / then that there is hope / until I die & then / there is other / people's hope," I have thought about them many times, they have merged with my own consciousness. That's the power of Bird's poems-they resonate at such a visceral and cerebral level that they become a part of you. The All + Flesh marks the arrival of an endlessly moving and astounding voice in Indigenous poetry. I, for one, will be reading these poems for the rest of my life." — Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A MINOR CHORUS

"In The All + Flesh, Brandi Bird maps the psychic space between 'NDN compartmentalization' and split prairies, from bus depots to 'endocrine storms,' from LiveJournal to a living history of relocation under land theft. 'My body is not an empire but first contact happened at / birth' and 'I eat / until my mouth needles / the dark.' With exacting lucidity, Bird's lyrics chart the body as a reservoir for colonial malice, a site of resistance, and a conduit for a voice that is visceral, immediate, and uncompromising. An absolute triumph of a debut."— Liz Howard, author of Letters in a Bruised Cosmos

Additional Information
96 pages | 6.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

In the heart-stopping sequel to The Witch King, Wyatt and Emyr attempt to rebuild Asalin despite unexpected new enemies within their kingdom.

Two weeks after the door to Faery closed once more, Asalin is still in turmoil. Emyr and Wyatt are hunting Derek and Clarke themselves after having abolished the corrupt Guard and are trying to convince the other kingdoms to follow their lead. But when they uncover the hidden truth about the witches’ real place in fae society, it becomes clear the problems run much deeper than anyone knew. And this may be more than the two of them can fix.

As Wyatt struggles to learn how to control his magic and balance his own needs with the needs of a kingdom, he must finally decide on the future he wants—before he loses the future he and Emyr are building…

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for ages 13+

This is the second book in The Witch King Duology.

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.27" x 7.95" | Paperback

An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada’s most daring literary talents.

An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.

What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.

Whether he’s meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.

Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become—and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.

Reviews
"No one breaks your heart as elegantly as Billy-Ray Belcourt. Innovative, intimate, and meticulous, A Minor Chorus is a thoughtful riot of intersections and juxtapositions, a congregation of keenly observed laments gently vivisecting the small, Northern Alberta community at its core."—Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster

"The literary child of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, this novel builds on both, and is yet still something so new. It has the guts to centre Indigenous queer life as worthy of serious intellectual and artistic inquiry—which, of course, it always has been. We will be reading and re-reading and learning from A Minor Chorus for decades to come."—Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

"An absolutely dazzling confluence of big ideas and raw emotions, told in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s singular poetic voice. A Minor Chorus is about loving, questioning, and fighting for your life, and it’s as compelling a debut novel as I’ve read in years."—Jami Attenberg, author of I Came All This Way to Meet You

"A truly exceptional novel about how the disregarded sometimes live the most remarkable lives, and how storytelling will redeem us somehow, make us less lonely. A Minor Chorus is like a song that’s over too soon; I want to play it on repeat, to memorize the words so that I can sing them to myself."—Katherena Vermette, author of The Strangers

Additional Information
192 pages | 5.20" x 7.78" | Hardcover

Blood follows a Two-Spirit Indigenous person as they navigate urbanity, queerness, and a kaleidoscope of dreams, memory, and kinship.

Conceived in the same world as their acclaimed debut, Bones, Tyler Pennock's Blood centres around a protagonist who at first has difficulty knowing the difference between connection and pain, and we move with them as they explore what it means to want. Pennock weaves longing, intimacy, and Anishinaabe relationalities to recentre and rethink their speaker's relationship to the living--never forgetting non-human kin.

This book is a look at how deep history is represented in the everyday; it also tries to answer how one person can challenge the impacts of that history. It is a reminder that Indigenous people carry the impacts of colonial history and wrestle with them constantly. Blood explores the relationships between spring and winter, ice and water, static things and things beginning to move, and what emerges in the thaw.

Reviews
"Pennock's Blood shines on the parts of the self that defy the ruthlessness of empire. By turns inward to the still and sobering power of language, and again outward to the echoes of 'leaves and wind,' a music as sensitive as it is revelatory ushers us into his unique measure of aliveness. The poet here is engaged and unafraid to look long." — Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst

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

Ndè Sii Wet'aà: Northern Indigenous Voices on Land, Life, & Art is a collection of essays, interviews, short stories and poetry written by emerging and established northern Indigenous writers and artists. Centred on land, cultural practice and northern life, this ground-breaking collection shares wealth of Dene (Gwichʼin, Sahtú, Dehcho, Tłı̨chǫ, Saysi, Kaska, Dënesuiné, W?ìl?ìdeh ) Inuit, Alutiiq, Inuvialuit, Métis, Nêhiyawak (Cree), Northern Tutchone, and Tanana Athabascan creative brilliance. Ndè Sii Wet'aà holds up the voices of women and Two Spirit and Queer writers to create a chorus of voices reflecting a deep love of Indigenous cultures, languages, homelands and the north. The book includes a series of pieces and interviews from established northern artists and musicians including Leela Gilday, Randy Baillargeon (lead singer for the W?ìl?ìdeh Drummers), Inuit sisters, song-writers and throat singers Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay of Piqsiq, Two Spirit Vuntut Gwitchin visual artist Jeneen Frei Njootli, Nunavik singer-songwriters Elisapie and Beatrice Deere and visual artist Camille Georgeson-Usher. Ndè Sii Wet'aà also includes writing from well-known northern writers Siku Allooloo, T'áncháy Redvers (Fireweed), Antione Mountain (From Bear Rock Mountain), Glen Coulthard (Red Skin, White Masks), Catherine Lafferty (Northern Wildflower, Land-Water-Sky) and Lianne Marie Leda Charlie, in amongst the best emerging writers in the north.

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

A remarkable YA love story between two Aboriginal boys -- one who doesn’t want to accept he’s gay, and the boy who comes to live in his house who makes him realize who he is.

It's a hot summer, and life's going all right for Jackson and his family on the Mish. It's almost Christmas, school's out, and he's hanging with his mates, teasing the visiting tourists, avoiding the racist boys in town. Just like every year, Jackson's Aunty and annoying little cousins visit from the city -- but this time a mysterious boy with a troubled past comes with them. As their friendship evolves, Jackson must confront the changing shapes of his relationships with his friends, family and community. And he must face his darkest secret -- a secret he thought he'd locked away for good.

Reviews
"It is, honestly, a book I've been searching for over my whole career as an editor, as well as all my years as a queer reader. I'm not ashamed to say that it made me cry (repeatedly) and awed me with the power of its storytelling." -- David Levithan

"How I wish I had this big-hearted book when I was a teenager. It would've changed my life. Let it change yours." -- Benjamin Law

"A deftly woven tale that is both a raw, unflinching look at the experience of growing up gay and Aboriginal, and a sweet, truly endearing love story you just can't turn away from. This is Own Voices storytelling at its best." -- Holden Sheppard

"Honest. Funny. Beautiful. This book is all the things." -- Gabbie Stroud

Educator Information
Recommended for ages 14+

Additional Information
256 pages | 5.72" x 8.55" | Hardcover

Gideon the Ninth meets Black Sun in this queer, Māori-inspired debut fantasy about a police officer who is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.

Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.

Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.

Reviews
"A wonderful queer noir fever dream."—Tamsyn Muir, internationally bestselling author of Gideon the Ninth

"Fiercely queer. A strange and wondrous re-imagining of noir that takes its cues from biopunk and SE Asian mythos to create something wholly different. There's real imagination at work here—I loved it."—Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Trail of Lightning and Black Sun

"The Dawnhounds packs hard-hitting, mind-bending weirdness into a story that’s still touching and human. If you’re looking for gritty queer spec fic that isn’t unrelentingly grim, you’ve found it.”—Casey Lucas, award-winning author of Into the Mire

Educator & Series Information
This book is part of The Endsong series.

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

To save a fae kingdom, a trans witch must face his traumatic past and the royal fiancé he left behind.

Wyatt would give anything to forget where he came from—but a kingdom demands its king.

In Asalin, fae rule and witches like Wyatt Croft…don’t. Wyatt’s betrothal to his best friend, fae prince Emyr North, was supposed to change that. But when Wyatt lost control of his magic one devastating night, he fled to the human world.

Now a coldly distant Emyr has hunted him down. Despite transgender Wyatt’s newfound identity and troubling past, Emyr has no intention of dissolving their engagement. In fact, he claims they must marry now or risk losing the throne. Jaded, Wyatt strikes a deal with the enemy, hoping to escape Asalin forever. But as he gets to know Emyr, Wyatt realizes the boy he once loved may still exist. And as the witches face worsening conditions, he must decide once and for all what’s more important—his people or his freedom.

Reviews
"Edgmon's ebullient debut depicts a variety of trans perspectives with tender sensitivity, and quintessential walking disaster Wyatt's self-deprecating humor, punk glee, and surprisingly level head are vividly lovable... Readers will adore this revolution-tinged celebration of trans joy, which refreshingly builds its conflict without jumping for trauma tropes." – Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Edgmon's debut is a spellbinding duology starter, ultimately driven by its core cast of complicated and lovable characters, who will keep readers laughing with deftly written, witty dialogue that never veers into cliché, and a richly layered world that feels incredibly real, with high-stakes fascism, corruption, and oppression. Readers will be left eager for the sequel to this fiery stunner of a fantasy." –Booklist

"A complex fantasy debut, rich in nuanced LGBTQIA+ representation and timely social commentary, perfect for fans of Adam Silvera, Holly Black, and Rin Chupeco." –School Library Journal

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for ages 13+

Caution: mature/potentially triggering content, such as violence, misgendering, abuse, sexual harassment, drug use, etc.

This is the first book in The Witch King Duology.

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.32" x 7.79" | Paperback

Sydney never thought she would be the new girl at school, but when she moves to Minneapolis, everything changes. At her old school on the reservation, almost all the kids were Native, and she was a tough bully. Now, at her new school, which has only a few Native kids, she wonders if she will fit in.

Sydney is a teenage girl who has always gone to a school with other Native students on her reservation. She has friends who support her when she bullies a fellow student, but life takes an unexpected turn when her mother moves the family to Minneapolis so she can take a new job. Her mother is excited about the move, but Sydney feels just the opposite. She does not want to become an urban Indian, and she especially does not want to leave her friends.

On the first day of school, Sydney tries to fit in, but it doesn’t take her long to realize that her Native looks make her stand out like a sore thumb. After Sydney accidentally bumps into a classmate in the hall, she becomes the target of bullying. Although she was used to being a bully, the tables are now turned.

When her life becomes almost unbearable, Sydney is approached by a boy in the lunchroom, who asks if he can join her. Not knowing what to think, she agrees, and the chance encounter initiates a close friendship. Her new friend, Finn, who is gay, is also a target of bullying. Sydney’s experience with being bullied, and seeing her friend bullied as well, makes her feel bad about herself and regret who she used to be. She realizes she must make amends with the girl she had bullied at her old school before she can feel better about herself and begin the journey to self-forgiveness.

Reviews
“Sigafus (Ojibwa) has written a brief and accessible novel that will engage readers and help them understand that we all make mistakes…. A compassionate story for reluctant readers.”— Kirkus Reviews

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for grades 7 to 9.

Fry Reading Level: 4

This book is part of the PathFinders Collection of Indigenous Hi-Lo- novels. Interest level is pre-teen on up. 

The PathFinders series of Hi-Lo (high interest, low readability) novels offers the following features:

• Indigenous teen protagonists
• Age-appropriate plots
• 2.5 – 4.5 Reading Level
• Contemporary and historical fiction
• Indigenous authors

The PathFinders series is from an American publisher. Therefore, Indigenous terminology in the PathFinders books is not the same as Canadian Indigenous terminology. This prompts a useful teaching moment for educators in discussing appropriate terminology use in Canada.

This book is Book 1 in the Sydney's Journey series.

The story examines the effects of bullying on teens, which continues to be a huge social problem.

Additional Information
118 pages | 4.50" x 7.00" | Paperback

Poems about a young two-spirit Indigenous man moving through shadow and trauma toward strength and awareness. Bones, Tyler Pennock's wise and arresting debut, is about the ways we process the traumas of our past, and about how often these experiences eliminate moments of softness and gentleness. Here, the poem's journey inward, guided by the world of dreams, seeking memories of a loving sister lost beneath layers of tragedy and abuse. With bravery, the poems stand up to the demons lurking in the many shadows of their lines, seeking glimpses of a good that is always just out of reach. At moments heartrending and gut-punching, at others still and sweet, Bones is a collection of deep and painstaking work that examines the human spirit in all of us. This is a hero's journey and a stark look at the many conditions of the soul. This is a book for survivors, for fighters, for dreamers, and for believers.

Reviews
"Here is a spare and urgent voice that speaks of 'wounds and beauty,' that gestures to a story of trauma and abuse while offering us a potent journey of self-reckoning and reclamation. Bones entwines brutality with the deepest tenderness and in its clear-eyed way asks us, as poetry must, to re-see the world." --Catherine Bush, author of Accusation and The Rules of Engagement

"Tyler Pennock's poetry unfurls like breath: measured, light, caught, whispering, and vital. It charts memory with a steady hand and unerring allegiance to locating the 'beauty/in terrible things.' Bones addresses the effects of intergenerational, state-sponsored trauma with enviable grace, inscribing and affirming life on the other side of overwhelming pain, abuse, and grief. It carries on, resilient, defiant, gazing at the stars, one breath at a time." --Laurie D. Graham, author of Settler Education

"Tyler Pennock's Bones is a soft meandering through the memories of the narrator's hearthome: a place in which trauma, kinship, abuse, and nostalgia cradle one another in a circle. Here, poetics are deployed to inspect the most minute of objects with such wild abandon that the narrator transplants us into a world rife with sharpness so as to make the image complete, focussed, lifelike, photographic even as he continually 'wish[es he] were like water'. Here we find memory and dream animated in equal measure: two spirits sitting in a basement, a headless mother, a white bear, wihtiko, and a sister slowly vanishing. Lyrical, witty, heart-wrenching, and empowering, Pennock's debut book of poetry is a contemplative epic asking us to ponder the ethics of remembrance in all of its lacings of razing and revitalization." --Joshua Whitehead, author of Full-Metal Indigiqueer and Jonny Appleseed

Additional Information
104 pages | 6.00" x 8.75"

Dez and Miikwan’s stories continue in this sequel to Surviving the City.

Dez’s grandmother has passed away. Grieving, and with nowhere else to go, she’s living in a group home. On top of everything else, Dez is navigating a new relationship and coming into her identity as a Two-Spirit person.

Miikwan is crushing on the school’s new kid Riel, but doesn’t really understand what Dez is going through. Will she learn how to be a supportive ally to her best friend?

Elder Geraldine is doing her best to be supportive, but she doesn’t know how to respond when the gendered protocols she’s grown up with that are being thrown into question.

Will Dez be comfortable expressing her full identity? And will her community relearn the teachings and overcome prejudice to celebrate her for who she is?

Educator & Series Information
Recommended for ages 12 to 18.

This is the second volume in the Surviving the City graphic novel series, which is also part of the Debwe Series. 

Surviving the City is a contemporary graphic novel series about young Indigenous women navigating their way in an urban environment. It includes these books:

Surviving the City
From the Roots Up
We Are the Medicine

A Teacher Guide is available: Surviving the City Teacher Guide: Exploring Identity, Allyship, and Social Action for Meaningful Change in Grades 7-12 

Additional Information
64 pages | 6.50" x 10.00"

it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. As a way to move from the linear timeline of healing and coming to terms with how trauma does not exist in subsequent happenings, it was never going to be okay tries to break down years of silence in simpson’s debut collection of poetry:

i am five

my sisters are saying boy

i do not know what the word means but—

i am bruised into knowing it: the blunt b,

the hollowness of the o, the blade of y

Awards

• 2021 Indigenous Voices Awards winner for Published Poetry in English.

Reviews
"jaye simpson’s it was never going to be okay is a symphony of unrelenting rage and undying hope that beckons to be heard, seen and held with the utmost care. In this stunning debut they speak truths to the complexities of the body, land and memory through an intimately structured and poignant cadence. This collection will leave you longing for more and, in the legacy of trans Indigenous literature, change lives." — Arielle Twist, author of Disintegrate/Dissociate

"jaye simpson marshals a vast economy of images because their subject matter is as large as an entire country, as the colonial past, as structures of oppression and indifference that undermine Indigenous and trans livability. At the level of craft, simpson makes use of the codes of tragedy, polemic, autobiography and the lyric artfully and powerfully. By the book’s end, buoyed by its final beautiful and tender section, a kind of love letter to trans Indigenous peoples, one is called on to build a new world. In this way, jaye simpson's poetry is a vital artifact of a decolonial future!" — Billy-Ray Belcourt, 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize winner for This Wound Is a World

Additional Information
112 pages | 5.50" x 8.00"