Format: Live Webinar
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The Peace Liard Regional Arts Council (PLRAC) is thrilled to feature acclaimed authors Louise Bernice Halfe and Gregory Scofield at this year’s Wild Words North Festival. This live webinar will include readings by the authors, followed by a discussion about their work.
Louise Bernice Halfe — Sky Dancer became Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate on January 1, 2021. Born in Two Hills, Alberta, Louise was raised on Saddle Lake Reserve and attended Blue Quills Residential School. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social work — as well as honorary Degrees of Letters from Wilfried Laurier University, University of Saskatchewan and Mount Royal University — and previously served as Saskatchewan’s second Poet Laureate. Louise’s published works include Bear Bones and Feathers (1994), Blue Marrow (2004), The Crooked Good (2007) and Burning in this Midnight Dream (2016), all of which have received numerous accolades and awards. Sôhkêyihta, published in 2018, features selected poems and her latest work, awâsis – kinky and dishevelled, was released in April 2021.
Gregory Scofield, Associate Professor of Writing at the University of Victoria, is a Red River Metis of Cree, Scottish and European descent whose ancestry can be traced to the fur trade and to the Metis community of Kinosota, Manitoba. Gregory won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 1994 for his debut collection, The Gathering: Stones for the Medicine Wheel, and has since published seven further volumes of poetry including, Witness, I am. He is the recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012), and most recently the Writers’ Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize (2016) that is awarded to a mid-career poet in recognition of a remarkable body of work. Gregory’s first memoir, Thunder Through My Veins (Doubeday Canada/Anchor Books), was re-published Fall 2019. Further to writing and teaching, Scofield is also a skilled bead-worker, and he creates in the medium of traditional Metis arts. He continues to assemble a collection of mid to late 19th century Cree-Metis artifacts, which are used as learning and teaching pieces.