Lee Maracle, Cherie Dimaline, Tanya Talaga shortlisted for Indigenous Literature Award
Lee Maracle's My Conversations with Canadians, Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves and Tanya Talaga's Seven Fallen Feathers are among the books shortlisted for the Indigenous Literature Award, which is part of the First Nation Communities READ program.
A jury of Indigenous librarians across Ontario selected five books for the young adult/adult shortlist and five books for the children's shortlist. The winners will be announced on June 27 in Toronto as part of National Indigenous History Month. They will each receive $3,000.
My Conversations with Canadians is a nonfiction book by celebrated Sto:Lo writer Maracle. The book addresses the questions Maracle has been asked by readers and audience members throughout her career, on topics such as citizenship, prejudice and reconciliation.
Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves is a bestselling novel and winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — text and the Kirkus Prize for young readers' literature. The book is set in a dystopian future where North America's Indigenous peoples are on the run from a sinister uprising of residential schools. The book was defended by Jully Black on Canada Reads 2018.
In Seven Fallen Feathers, journalist Tanya Talaga investigates the deaths of seven Indigenous youth in Northern Ontario: Jordan Wabasse, Paul Panacheese, Kyle Morrisseau, Reggie Bushie, Robyn Harper, Jethro Anderson and Curran Strang. Talaga won the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize and is the 2018 CBC Massey Lecturer.
Rounding out the shortlist are #NotYourPrincess, an anthology of essays, poems and art, edited by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale, and He Who Dreams, a YA novel by award-winning children's writer Melanie Florence.
On the children's shortlist is writer David A. Robertson and illustrator Julie Flett for their collaboration When We Were Alone. In the Governor General's Literary Award-winning picture book, a grandmother tells her granddaughter about her experience in residential school.
Flett is also a finalist for the book My Heart Fills with Happiness written by Monique Gray Smith. The board book is about all the simple things that bring joy to life.
The shortlist also includes children's books The Water Walker by Joanne Robertson, The Cloud Artist by Sherri Maret and Akalik's Adventure by Deborah Kigjugalik Webster.
The 2017 Indigenous Literature Award was won by Carol Daniels for Bearskin Diary.