Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Of Bonobos and Men (Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism and Grand Prize winner); Cures for Hunger, a memoir about his father who was a bank robber (an IndieNext pick and a selection for Oprah’s summer reading list and voted one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Into the Sun, a novel about the civilian surge in Afghanistan (Midwest Book Award for literary fiction and chosen by CBC/Radio Canada as one of the most important books of 2017 to be read by Canada's political leaders); Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation, an epistolary book of young-adult non-fiction co-authored with Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine; White, a novel exploring the legacy of colonialism and the impact of neocolonialism in the Congo and in Canada; and A Song from Faraway, a short-story collection forthcoming in 2020.
He has reported from India, Cuba, Rwanda, Colombia, Iraq, the Congo, and Afghanistan. He has been a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine Award and has been featured in Best Canadian Essays 2017, and his photojournalism has been exhibited in the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
Born in 1991, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine is Innu, originally from Pessamit on Quebec’s North Shore.
Poet-performer, actor, visual artist, and activist for Indigenous and environmental rights, she lives in Montreal. Her first collection of poems, Do Not Enter My Soul in Your Shoes (translated by Howard Scott; Mawenzi House, 2015), recounts her initial identity questioning and was hailed by critics, earning her the 2013 Prix littéraire des Écrivains francophones d’Amérique. A finalist at the 2015 Prix Émile-Nelligan, her second collection Assi Manifesto (Mawenzi House, 2016) offers a song to our planet Earth, suffocating as a result of the exploitation of natural resources, of tar sands in particular. Her third collection of poetry, Blueberries and Apricots (Mawenzi House, 2018) carries “the speech of the Indigenous woman, coming back to life to reverse history.” Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Race and Reconciliation (Talonbooks, 2018) is an epistolary exchange with celebrated Québécois-American author Deni Ellis Béchard. Translated into English by Howard Scott, Kanapé Fontaine’s books are now crossing borders and delighting audiences in Canada and around the world.
Kanapé Fontaine’s artistic and literary approach tends to bring together divergent peoples through dialogue, exchange, the sharing of values, and through the “tanning of skins” – a metaphorical way of scratching off the imperfections of thoughts and consciences. With poetry, she cradles environment and initiates a healing process. Kanapé Fontaine fights against racism, discrimination, and colonial mentalities through public speaking and poetry. She is often a guest poet, notably in Haiti, Belgium, France, Germany, Colombia, Scotland, and New Zealand (Aotearoa).
