This live event was recorded on October 15, 2022 at the Chimczuk Museum in Windsor, Ontario as part of the BookFest / Festival du Livre Windsor 2022 literary festival.
You will hear a conversation with moderator Gord Grisenthwaite and Louse Bernice Halfe Skydancer, Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Joseph Kakwinokanasum, and Tyler Pennock.
The event has been edited for sound and length. There are some mature subjects and language. It's all great.
Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer was raised on Saddle Lake Reserve and attended Blue Quills Residential School. She is Canada's Parliamentary Poet Laureate. Halfe was awarded the Latner Writers Trust Award for her body of work in 2017, and was awarded the 2020 Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. She was granted a lifetime membership in the League of Canadian Poets, and currently works with Elders in the organization Opikinawasowin (“raising our children”) and lives near Saskatoon with her husband, Peter. Brick Books has published a new edition of Burning in This Midnight Dream in May 2021. Her newest work is awâsis – kinky and dishevelled (Brick Books, 2021.)
Carol Rose GoldenEagle was appointed Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate in 2021. She is an author of the award-winning novel Bearskin Diary. It was chosen as the national Aboriginal Literature Title for 2017. The French language translation of this novel, entitled Peau D’ours won a Saskatchewan Book Award in 2019.
Her first book of poetry, titled Hiraeth, was shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Book Award in 2019. Her second novel, Bone Black, was released in the Fall of 2019.
Her latest novel, The Narrows of Fear, was released October 2020, and the chosen title for a 2021 Saskatchewan Book Award. Another collection of poetry, called Essential Ingredients, was released in 2021. Her poetry collection, entitled Stations of the Crossed, is published by Inanna Publications.
Joseph Kakwinokanasum is a member of the James Smith Cree Nation who grew up in the Peace region of northern BC, one of seven children raised by a single mother. A graduate of SFU's Writers Studio, his short story “Ray Says” was a finalist for CBC’s 2020 Nonfiction Prize. His work has appeared in The Humber Literary Review and Resonance: Essays on the Craft and Life of Writing. In 2022, he was selected by Darrel J. McLeod as one of The Writers Trust of Canada’s “Rising Stars.” He now lives and writes on Vancouver Island. Loosely based on his own childhood, My Indian Summer is his first novel.
Tyler Pennock, author of Bones (2020) and Blood (2022) is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Métis family in the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta. Tyler is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013, and currently live in Toronto.
Gord (G. A.) Grisenthwaite is Nłeʔkepmx, member of the Lytton First Nation. His work has earned a number of prizes, including the 2014 John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award. He lives in Kingsville, ON. His first book, Home Waltz was a Finalist for 2021 Governor General Award for Fiction and Longlisted for the 2021 First Nation Communities Read Award
Literary Arts Windsor would like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage CAPF Fund, and the Canada Council for the Arts for funding our festival.