Joshua Whitehead

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), which won Canada Reads (2021), and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award. Whitehead’s poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks), was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award for Most Significant Work of Poetry in English and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. His essay, Who Names the Rez Dog Rez? won gold at the National Magazine Awards in 2021. Whitehead is an Assistant Professor at The University of Calgary. 

Website: joshuawhitehead.com
Instagram: @jwhitehead204
Twitter:
@JWhitehead204

A truly dazzling feat of heart, analysis, and sentence-making.” –Billy-Ray Belcourt

FESTIVAL BOOK

Jonny Appleseed

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">A tour-de-force debut novel about a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer young man and proud NDN glitter princess who must reckon with his past when he returns home to his reserve.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">"You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling debut novel by poet Joshua Whitehead.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the "rez"–and his former life–to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The seven days that follow are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny's life is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages–and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life.</span>

<i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Jonny Appleseed</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is a unique, shattering vision of First Nations life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.</span>

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<b>BE CURIOUSER</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">   </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Debut Novel opening doors for Joshua Whitehead — and two-spirit queer Indigenous folks </span><a href="https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2018/09/26/debut-novel-opening-doors-for-joshua-whitehead-and-two-spirit-queer-indigenous-folks.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">- </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Toronto Star</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">- </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">   </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Review: Joshua Whitehead’s Johnny Appleseed is a milestone novel about love, in all its messy forms  </span><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/reviews/article-review-jonny-appleseed-is-about-love-in-all-its-messy-forms/"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">-The Globe and Mail</span></i></a></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-weight: 400;">​​</span><b>GET THE BOOK</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span><a href="https://shop.owlsnestbooks.com/item/6nvBPLOyqFgjT22bOzDrNw"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Owl’s Nest Books</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (Calgary) | </span><a href="https://calgary.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S95C1172875"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Calgary Public Library</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span>

Making Love with the Land

In the last few years, following the publication of his debut novel <em>Jonny Appleseed</em>, 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). <em>Making Love with the Land</em> 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.

<strong>GET THE BOOK</strong>

<a href="https://shop.owlsnestbooks.com/item/rC8Hn_GwKfT-y0gqhdp7Qw">Owl’s Nest Books</a> (Calgary) | <a href="https://calgary.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S95C1453162">Calgary Public Library </a>

<strong>BE CURIOUSER</strong>
<ul>
<li><strong>How Joshua Whitehead is bringing Indigenous languages into CanLit. </strong><a href="https://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/joshua-whitehead-takes-on-canlit/"><strong>-</strong><em>Macleans</em></a></li>
</ul>
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ALL EVENTS WITH Joshua Whitehead

6:30 PM
Dick Lit's Trivia with Joshua Whitehead
Oct 03 @ 6:30 PM MT - 8:30 PM MT

Memorial Park Library, 2nd Floor

1221 2 St SW