Francine Cunningham

Francine Cunningham is a writer, artist and educator. She is member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta and grew up in Calgary, Edmonton, and 100 Mile House, BC. Cunningham is also Métis and has settler family roots stretching from as far away as Ireland and Belgium. Her debut book of poems , On/Me, was nominated for The BC and Yukon Book Prize, The Indigenous Voices Award, and The Vancouver Book Award. Her debut book of short stories, God Isn’t Here Today, was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shield’s Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the 2023 Indigenous Voices Award. Cunningham’s writing for television includes the teen reality show THAT’S AWSM! Her work has also appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories, The Best Canadian Non-Fiction, in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizon’s Prose shortlist, and on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, among others. Cunningham is the 2023-2024 Canadian Writer-in-Residence in the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program and currently lives in Calgary.

Website: francinecunningham.ca
Instagram: @francinecunningham

FESTIVAL BOOK

God Isn’t Here Today

(This is) a collection that is whispered in the calligraphy of ghosts. Cunningham continues to both astound and haunt all who discover her. Wow!” –Richard Van Camp, author of The Lesser Blessed

For fans of Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates, and Karen Russell, the stories in God Isn’t Here Today ricochet between form and genre, taking readers on a dark, irreverent, yet poignant journey led by a unique and powerful new voice.

Driven by desperation into moments of transformation, Cunningham’s characters are presented with moments of choice — some for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to God’s office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his truck’s song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide but comes with a burden of its own. Even as they flirt with the fantastic, Cunningham’s stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature — and that redemption can arise where we least expect it.

GET THE BOOK

Shelf Life Books | Calgary Public Library

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