Massive congrats are due to Jesse Thistle and Cody Caetano, who have both been honored with Indigenous Voices Awards this year. The Indigenous Voices Awards (IVAs) were established in 2017 to support and nurture the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada.
Jesse Thistle has won in the category of “Published Prose in English” for his number one nationally bestselling memoir, From The Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way (Simon & Schuster). From The Ashes has deservedly racked up the accolades this year, as it is also a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Nonfiction, a finalist for CBC Canada Reads, a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, an Indigo Book of the Year and a CBC Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of the Year.
In this extraordinary and inspiring debut memoir, Jesse Thistle, once a high school dropout and now a rising Indigenous scholar, chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is.
Jesse Thistle is Métis-Cree, from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He is an assistant professor in Métis Studies at York University in Toronto. He is a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and the Indigenous Voices Awards, won a Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2016, and is a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Vanier Scholar. He lives in Hamilton, Ont. Jesse is represented by Samantha Haywood.
Cody Caetano has won in the category of “Unpublished Prose in English” for an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, Half-Bads in White Regalia (Hamish Hamilton). HALF-BADS IN WHITE REGALIA investigates the soreness of diasporic kinships, what happens when a fractured story is told in a circle, the perilous in-betweens of mixed identity and poverty, Anishinaabe joy, humour as a built-in preservation system, and the inheritance of memories one would do anything to forget.
Cody is a proud member of Pinaymootang First Nation and the Bloorcourt neighbourhood in Toronto, the latter of which is where he currently lives with his two cats. He is working on his second memoir, THE CANCELLING OF CAPTAIN PLEASURE DOME. Cody is represented by Stephanie Sinclair.
To see the full list of honorees, please visit: https://indigenousvoicesawards.org/home-page