"My mother-in-law and muse Mary Carcagee Cadieux was Shutaghotine Dene and grew up in a skin tent in the Mackenzie Mountains. She said, 'A story is a gift meant to be shared.' So roll the rock away from the cave that holds your secret stash and let your stories free."

Patti-Kay Hamilton writes, skis and paddles in Fort Smith, N.W.T. She won the 2014 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize for The Hunter and the Swan and was shortlisted for the 2016 Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story writing competition. Her story Stampeded made the longlist for the 2017 CBC Short Story Prize.