Wordfest 25@25: Téa Mutonji & Joshua Whitehead

Wordfest 25@25: Téa Mutonji & Joshua Whitehead

On Oct. 27, Cherie Dimaline passed the daisy to Joshua Whitehead who invited Téa Mutonji to be his virtual stage-mate.

The 60-minute conversation, hosted by Shelley Youngblut, will start at 7:00 PM MT. (The pre-show will begin at 6:50 PM MT.) And as we do every Tuesday, we'll be revealing the names of the next two authors in the 25@25 Daisy Chain at the end of the show.

25 @ 25 pass or ticket holders will be automatically registered for this event, with access to the live stream on Wordfest.com, as well as the option of watching it on demand whenever works for you. Look for our unique Digital Doggie Bag after the event with all the links, goodies and references from the conversation.

About Joshua Whitehead

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, 2018), longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks, 2017) and the winner of the Governor General's History Award for the Indigenous Arts and Stories Challenge in 2016. Currently he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures in the University of Calgary's English department (Treaty 7).

About Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction

A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed. 

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction collection showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories. 

Here, readers will discover bioengineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, mother ships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492. 

Contributors include: Nathan Adler, Darcie Little Badger, Gabriel Castilloux Calderon, Adam Garnet Jones, Mari Kurisato, Kai Minosh Pyle, David Alexander Robertson, jaye simpson, and Nazbah Tom.

About Téa Mutonji

Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Téa Mutonji now lives in Toronto, Ontario. Her debut collection of short stories, Shut Up You're Pretty, was the first title published under Vivek Shraya's VS. Books imprint, dedicated to new and emerging writers from Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. It  won the 2020 Trillium Book Award and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, was a Finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, and was named a Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail and The Walrus.

About Shut Up You’re Pretty

WINNER OF THE 2020 TRILLIIUM BOOK AWARD

In Téa Mutonji's disarming debut story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.

Buy Their Books

Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Shut Up You’re Pretty

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Buy Their Recommended Books

To continue with the generosity that is at the heart of the Daisy Chain concept – and help promote the work of authors whose book events have been affected by COVID-19 – we asked the 25@25 authors to highlight a book published in 2020 that they would encourage you to read. These books will be available at Owl's Nest and Shelf Life in Calgary. If you buy five or more of the 25@25 authors’ featured books (either their current title or their backlist) or their recommended books, you will receive a 25% discount. Please contact the booksellers for more details about the discount.

Buy Joshua Whitehead’s Recommended Book: Arborescent by Marc Herman Lynch

“I had to choose it because it's set in Calgary. But he refused to call it Calgary and only refers to it as Moh-kíns-tsis and that was rare for me to see an entire Canadian city, especially a large one, fully referenced from a non-Indigenous writer with its Indigenous name. I loved that. I’m also a huge Indiginerd, so I love horror…and magical realism but all of that done from a BIPOC voice that doesn’t fetishize it as magical realism. Where, in fact, magical realism just becomes the real. I think Marc Herman Lynch does that so beautifully in Arborescent. I cannot praise it and recommend it enough. Specifically for those of us in YYC, I think it’s a little bit of essential reading for the immigrant experience, Indigenous livelihoods, and just badass Chinese oral storytelling.”

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Buy Téa Mutonji’s Recommended Book: They Said This Would be Fun by Eternity Martis  

“Easy for my book recommendation: I’m obsessed with Eternity Martis’ book: They Said This Would Be Fun!”

Owl's Nest Books | Shelf Life Books

Curiouser?

Personal Essay:

• Joshua Whitehead reflects on music and the surprising connection he made with a neighbour while in isolation – CBC Books

Profile:

• Vivek Shraya’s book imprint launches with Scarborough author Téa Mutonji – The Toronto Star