An Evening with Waubgeshig Rice

Join us for an evening with Waubgeshig Rice as he returns to Winnipeg to discuss Moon of the Turning Leaves (Random House of Canada) featuring a reading and a conversation hosted by Rosanna Deerchild. A book signing will follow. Co-presented by McNally Robinson Booksellers.

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

It’s been over a decade since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy. Evan Whitesky led his community in remote northern Ontario off the rez and into the bush, where they’ve been living off the land, rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions in total isolation from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in the world after everything, Evan’s people are in some ways stronger than ever. But resources in and around their new settlement are beginning to dry up, and the elders warn that they cannot afford to stay indefinitely.

Moon of the Turning Leaves is Waubgeshig Rice’s exhilarating return to the world first explored in the phenomenal breakout bestseller Moon of the Crusted Snow: a brooding story of survival, resilience, Indigenous identity, and rebirth.

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist originally from Wasauksing First Nation. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His latest novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was released in October 2018 and became a National Bestseller. Reporting for CBC News for the bulk of his career, in 2014 he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling and from 2018 to 2020 he hosted Up North, CBC Radio’s afternoon show for northern Ontario.

Host Rosanna Deerchild (She/Her) is Cree, from the community of O-Pipon-Na-Piwan Cree Nation. She has been a storyteller for more than 20 years; as a journalist, broadcaster and a poet. She is the host of CBC Radio One’s Unreserved. Her debut poetry collection this is a small northern town shared her reflections of growing up in a racially divided place. It won the 2009 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Her second book, calling down the sky, is a collaborative work with her mother who was forced to attend Indian Residential School. Her first play with the Royal MTC’s Pimootayowin Creators Circle was called The Secret to Good Tea and was produced for the stage during their 2022/2023 season.

See:

Moon of the Turning Leaves

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Twelve years after the lights go out . . .
An epic journey to a forgotten homeland

The hotly anticipated sequel to the bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow.

In the years since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy, Evan Whitesky has led his community in remote northern Canada off the rez and into the bush, where they’ve been rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions, isolated from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in a world after everything, Evan’s people are stronger than ever. But resources around their new settlement are drying up, and elders warn that they cannot stay indefinitely.
Evan and his teenaged daughter, Nangohns, are chosen to lead a scouting party on a months-long trip down to their traditional home on the shores of Lake Huron–to seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of life–and what danger–still exists in the lands to the south.

Waubgeshig Rice’s exhilarating return to the world first explored in Moon of the Crusted Snow is a brooding story of survival, resilience, Indigenous identity, and rebirth.