Events & Workshops

The Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild is excited to present Well-Versed: A Lecture Series. This virtual series will host well-established Canadian writers who will speak about what they have learned as a writer.

Our November 2022 lecture will feature Joshua Whitehead on Thursday, November 24, 2022, at 7:00 pm SK time (CST). Please be mindful of your time zone as all times listed are Saskatchewan time. Find your time zone here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter

This event will be recorded and made available for 30 days on the SWG YouTube channel following the event: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRAIIcrpQW0NcY6ZM0GGSzw

To register for this free virtual event, please visit: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QzU1vaJqSp6IC9zaYSmLBg

Writing from the Body

Joshua Whitehead aims to explore how we write with, of, and from our bodies in ways that prioritize cyclical relationships with all animate beings (including non-humans). Questions he might ask: Does a wound hold knowledge? How is our body in relationship with the plethora of bodies we are in community with: water, earth, stone, literature? How do we prioritize the realm of the ancestral in the guise of a dream as a writing praxis? In this talk, Whitehead will offer a guide to his writing styles and interests that spans a larger constellation of knowing inherent within the noun: body. 

Joshua Whitehead (he/him) is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is currently a Ph.D. candidate, lecturer, and Killam scholar at the University of Calgary where he studies Indigenous literature and cultures with a focus on gender and sexuality. His dissertation, tentatively titled "Feral Fatalisms," is a hybrid narrative of theory, essay, and non-fiction that interrogates the role of "ferality" inherent within Indigenous ways of being (with a strong focus on nêhiyawewin).

He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017) which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018) which was long-listed for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction.

Whitehead is the editor of Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, which won the Lambda Award in 2021.

Whitehead’s latest book Making Love with the Land was published in 2022 with Knopf Canada, exploring the intersections of Indigeneity, queerness, and, most prominently, mental health through a nêhiyaw lens. You can also find his work published widely in such venues as Prairie Fire, CV2, EVENT, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CNQ, Write, and Red Rising Magazine.

Host

Emily Riddle is Nehiyaw and a member of the Alexander First Nation (Kipohtakaw) in Treaty Six Territory. A writer, editor, policy analyst, language learner, and visual artist, she lives in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). She is the Senior Advisor for Indigenous relations at the Edmonton Public Library.

Her writing has been published in The Globe and Mail, Teen Vogue, The Malahat Review, and Room Magazine, among others. In 2021 she was awarded the Edmonton Artists’ Trust Award. Emily Riddle is a semi-dedicated Oilers fan and a dedicated Treaty Six descendant who believes deeply in the brilliance of the Prairies and their people. Her first book of poetry THE BIG MELT was released by Nightwood in the fall of 2022. 

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