Darrel J. McLeod is a Cree writer from treaty eight territory in Northern Alberta. Before his retirement, McLeod was chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nations. His first book Mamaskatch is a memoir of his childhood, raised by his mother Bertha who is a residential school survivor. McLeod is now working on two writing projects: his first work of fiction and a memoir that follows the events in Mamaskatch.

Mamaskatch won the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. McLeod wrote an original essay called Spanning Borders for the special CBC Books series Borders.