An Evening with Joshua Whitehead

Join us for an evening with Joshua Whitehead as he returns to Winnipeg to discuss his latest book, Making Love with the Land (Knopf Canada). This event co-presented by McNally Robinson Booksellers and hosted by Margaret Sweatman.

The event will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream with live chat. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

In the last few years, following the publication of his debut novel Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead has emerged as one of the most exciting and important new voices on Turtle Island. Now, in this first non-fiction work, Whitehead explores Indigeneity, queerness, and the relationships between body, language and land through a variety of genres (essay, memoir, notes, confession). Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities.

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press), which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award in Fiction, and the winner of both Canada Reads 2021 and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction at the Lambda Literary Awards, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks), which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award for Most Significant Work of Poetry in English and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Currently, he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary’s English department (Treaty 7).

Margaret Sweatman is a playwright, performer, and the author of six novels, including The Gunsmith’s Daughter (Goose Lane Editions). Her novels have won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, and the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She lives in Winnipeg

 

Making Love with the Land

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

Much-anticipated non-fiction from the author of the Giller-longlisted, GG-shortlisted and Canada Reads-winning novel Jonny Appleseed.

In the last few years, following the publication of his debut novel Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead has emerged as one of the most exciting and important new voices on Turtle Island. Now, in this first non-fiction work, Whitehead brilliantly explores Indigeneity, queerness, and the relationships between body, language and land through a variety of genres (essay, memoir, notes, confession). Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities. In sharp, surprising, unique pieces–a number of which have already won awards–Whitehead illuminates this particular moment, in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new (and old) ideas about “the land.” He asks: What is our relationship and responsibility towards it? And how has the land shaped our ideas, our histories, our very bodies?

Here is an intellectually thrilling, emotionally captivating love song–a powerful revelation about the library of stories land and body hold together, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.