Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer 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). Jonny Appleseed is his first novel. Twitter: @jwhitehead204. Twitter: @jwhitehead204.

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Reviews of Jonny Appleseed:

“Despite its often serious subject matter, Jonny Appleseed is a very funny book, in the same way that Indigenous people themselves are often very funny despite our traumas” – In the Globe and Mail

Interviews:

“Author Joshua Whitehead on Jonny Appleseed, his coming-of-age tale” – In the Toronto Star
“Jonny Appleseed” opens with the titular character discovering his sexuality through the mediator of HBO’s Queer as Folk, but rejecting that particular vision of queerness sometime after – In the Malahat Review
“These queer stories are already ingrained in the land, and I’m just trying to find them. Things are never forgotten, they’re just forgone” – In Room Magazine

Jonny Appleseed

Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself 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. He goes through the motions of preparing to return home, learning how to put together the pieces of his life