This page covers literary works (fiction, drama, and poetry) about or by authors from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. This is by no means an extensive list, but rather a starting point for your research. Looking for a title or author not listed on this page - try using the search box below. If you cannot find a specific title, you can either request for UFV Library borrow it from another library or that the UFV Library purchases the item (see the corresponding links below).
History, Literature and the Writing of the Canadian Prairies by Here is a small selection of prairie authors (who either were born, lived a significant amount of time, or died in the prairies) in the UFV Library collections:
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Vertical Man, Horizontal World by 
"When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break — a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house — she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime. In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim — police, family, and friends — tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night." - Author website
"When she makes the chance discovery of a framed sepia photograph of her grandmother and her twin sister, RCMP Constable Arabella Dryvynsydes decides to investigate how a picture taken in 1914 in the mining town of Extension, B.C. wound up at a garage sale in small-town Saskatchewan almost one hundred years later. As Arabella sifts through caches of long-forgotten letters and unearths long-buried memories, she pieces together the heartbreaking truth of her family history and resolves a nearly century-old murder. In her debut novel, Myrna Dey skillfully moves back and forth between two time periods and two memorably resourceful heroines." - Summary
"A major work by one of our most beloved and esteemed writers, the novel is based on real events that happened between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite community where more than 100 girls and women were drugged unconscious and raped in the night by what they were told were "ghosts" or "demons." Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. It takes place over 48 hours, as eight women hide in a hayloft while the men are in a nearby town posting bail for the perpetrators. They have come together to debate, on behalf of all the women and children in the community, whether to stay or leave before the men return. Taking minutes is the one man invited by the women to witness the conversation--a former outcast whose own surprising story is revealed as the women talk. By turns poignant, furious, witty, acerbic, tender, devastating, and heartbreaking, the voices in this extraordinary novel are unforgettable."-- Provided by publisher.
"After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan—and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years." - Amazon.ca
"In her best-loved novel, The Stone Angel , Margaret Laurence introduces Hagar Shipley, one of the most memorable characters in Canadian fiction. Stubborn, querulous, self-reliant - and, at ninety, with her life nearly behind her - Hagar Shipley makes a bold last step towards freedom and independence. As her story unfolds, we are drawn into her past. We meet Hagar as a young girl growing up in a black prairie town; as the wife of a virile but unsuccessful farmer with whom her marriage was stormy; as a mother who dominates her younger son; and, finally, as an old woman isolated by an uncompromising pride and by the stern virtues she has inherited from her pioneer ancestors. Vivid, evocative, moving, The Stone Angel celebrates the triumph of the spirit, and reveals Margaret Laurence at the height of her powers as a writer of extraordinary craft and profound insight into the workings of the human heart." - Summary
"Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Jonny's world is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages - and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home for his step-father's funeral, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life. Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams."
"A compelling, haunting novel about a man experiencing gaps in time, and the pain of living with mental illness. Felix wakes up one day to find himself with a girlfriend he doesn't recognize, a life together that is unfamiliar. A novel, with his name on the cover, that he doesn't remember writing. He's been losing time since university. Sometimes these gaps are minutes, sometimes months. But now he begins experiencing flashbacks--revisiting moments from his past--and moments where he gets a glimpse of an unsettling future. " - Summary
""It's an immense night out there, wheeling and windy. The lights on the street and in the houses against the black wetness, little unilluminating glints that might be painted on it. The town seems huddled together, cowering on a high tiny perch, afraid to move lest it topple into the wind." The town is Horizon, the setting of Sinclair Ross' brilliant classic study of life in the Depression era. Hailed by critics as one of Canada's great novels, As For Me and My House takes the form of a journal. The unnamed diarist, one of the most complex and arresting characters in contemporary fiction, explores the bittersweet nature of human relationships, of the unspoken bonds that tie people together, and the undercurrents of feeling that often tear them apart. Her chronicle creates an intense atmosphere, rich with observed detail and natural imagery. As For Me and My House is a landmark work. It is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the scope and power of the Canadian novel." - Summary
"When W.O. Mitchell died in 1998 he was described as "Canada's best-loved writer." Every commentator agreed that his best - and his best-loved - book was Who Has Seen the Wind. Since it was first published in 1947, this book has sold almost a million copies in Canada. As we enter the world of four-year-old Brian O'Connal, his father the druggist, his Uncle Sean, his mother, and his formidable Scotch grandmother ("she belshes...a lot"), it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary book. As we watch Brian grow up, the prairie and its surprising inhabitants like the Ben and Saint Sammy - and the rich variety of small-town characters - become unforgettable. This book will be a delightful surprise for all those who are aware of it, but have never quite got around to reading it, till now." - Summary
"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. If I can just make it to the next minute...then I might have a chance to live; I might have a chance to be something more than just a struggling crackhead. " - Description
"Making Love with the Land is a startling, heartwrenching look at what it means to live as a queer Indigenous person "in the rupture" between identities. In sharp, surprising, unique pieces--a number of which have already won awards--Whitehead illuminates this particular moment, in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new (and old) ideas about "the land." He asks: What is our relationship and responsibility towards it? And how has the land shaped our ideas, our histories, our very bodies? Here is an intellectually thrilling, emotionally captivating love song--a powerful revelation about the library of stories land and body hold together, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word." - Summary
"As a child, Amanda Lindhout escaped a violent household by paging through issues of National Geographic and imagining herself visiting its exotic locales... And then, in August 2008, she traveled to Somalia—“the most dangerous place on earth.” On her fourth day, she was abducted by a group of masked men along a dusty road. Held hostage for 460 days, Amanda survives on memory—every lush detail of the world she experienced in her life before captivity—and on strategy, fortitude, and hope. When she is most desperate, she visits a house in the sky, high above the woman kept in chains, in the dark. Vivid and suspenseful, as artfully written as the finest novel, A House in the Sky is “a searingly unsentimental account. Ultimately it is compassion—for her naïve younger self, for her kidnappers—that becomes the key to Lindhout’s survival” (O, The Oprah Magazine)." - Amazon.ca
" A slim but electrifying debut memoir about the preciousness and precariousness of queer Indigenous life. Opening with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life on the Driftpile First Nation, Billy-Ray Belcourt delivers a searing account of Indigenous life that's part love letter, part rallying cry. With the lyricism and emotional power of his award-winning poetry, Belcourt cracks apart his history and shares it with us one fragment at a time. He shines a light on Canada's legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it." - Summary
"In One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi shares her observations, fears and experiences as a woman of colour growing up in Canada. These are stories ranging from shaving her knuckles in grade school, to a shopping trip gone horribly awry, to internet garbage, to parsing the trajectory of fears and anxieties that pressed upon her immigrated parents and bled down a generation. Stories of returning to India where her parents grew up, and ultimately about trying to find her place in the world."- Provided by publisher
"This is a story about the fur trade and First Nations, and the development of northern Canada, seen and experienced not only through Leonard Flett’s eyes, but also through the eyes of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.The lives of indigenous people in remote areas of northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the 1960s and 1970s are examined in detail. Flett’s successful career with both the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company provides an insight into the dying days of the fur trade and the rise of a new retail business tailored to First Nations." - Description
"Facing the demise of the very creatures that he has always depended on for his sense of home, Herriot sets out to discover why birds are disappearing and what, if anything, we can do to save them. He takes us out to local pastures where a few prairie songbirds sing and nest, as well as to the open rangeland where doomed populations of burrowing owls and greater sage-grouse cling to survival. " - Summary
"It’s a matter of knowing winter. Snowbird travels south, seeks warmth, and begins waiting. Robert Kroetsch’s new collection, The Snowbird Poems, is a brilliant flight of departure. Beached where he watches a drowning horizon, teased by romance, Snowbird lets his responses become a message in a bottle to the lost and for the found. Appearing at first wearing bifocals and drinking from a fake coconut, Snowbird goes on to retrieve the footprint of story from the ocean of memory." - Summary
"Alice Major observes the comedy and the tragedy of this human-dominated moment on Earth. Major's most persistent question--"Where do we fit in the universe?"--is made more urgent by the ecological calamity of human-driven climate change. Her poetry leads us to question human hierarchies, loyalties, and consciousness, and challenges us to find some humility in our overblown sense of our cosmic significance." - Description
"On the occasion of the press's 40th anniversary, Brick Books is proud to present the fourth of six new editions of classic books from our back catalogue. This edition of A Really Good Brown Girl features a new Introduction by Lee Maracle, a new Afterword by the author and a new cover and design by the renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst. First published in 1996, A Really Good Brown Girl is a fierce, honest and courageous account of what it takes to grow into one's self and one's Metis heritage in the face of myriad institutional and cultural obstacles. It is an indispensable contribution to Canadian literature." - Description
"A wolf tree is a tree in a bush or a thicket which is different in shape from those around it; a tree whose broader trunk and spreading branches indicate that it once grew alone but is now surrounded. Alison Calder’s poems shine the light of a poet’s curiosity on all manner of “natural occurrences,” which nevertheless stand out. The book opens with an examination of the extreme forms this nature may take – from the Dutch legend of the false child Sooterkin, to two-headed calves, Zip the Pinhead, and other medical curiosities, particularly those captured by 19th century photographic techniques." - Summary
"mahikan ka onot collects the finest work of accomplished Indigenous poet Duncan Mercredi, from his first book in 1991 to recent unpublished poems. These are poems of life on the land as well as life in the city, vibrant with the rhythms of traditional Cree and Métis storytelling but also with the clamour and the music of the streets." - Summary
"From Room to Room: The Poetry of Eli Mandel presents thirty-five of Mandel’s best poems written over four decades, from the 1950s to the 1980s. The selection covers the most prominent themes in Mandel’s work, including his Russian-Jewish heritage, his Saskatchewan upbringing, his interest in classical and biblical archetypes, and his concern for the political and social issues of his time. The book also highlights the way in which Mandel’s work bridged the formal attributes of modernist poetry with contemporary, sometimes experimental, poetics." - Summary
"Roy Kiyooka's reputation as an artist has long been recognized. Such is not the case with his writing and poetry, even though his engagement with language as a medium of artistic consciousness had been a preoccupation all along. For Kiyooka the poet, the poetic text was not a supplement to his visual art, but a medium that he explored in the same spirit and imagination as that of his other work. His poetry reflects his life-long intellectual engagement with the aesthetics of experience and his artistry in transforming the elements of language into poetic texts striking for their care with words, syntax, and the multiform spaces of the imagination. " - Summary from Publisher
"1957. Barely a decade after the first use of atomic bombs, the world is divided and fearful of the real threat of nuclear weaponry. In an effort to understand the devastating effects of radiation, leading scientists and academics--world-renowned "Thinkers"--are invited to a conference in the small town of Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Two local children, Conni and Jamie, take interest in some of the Thinkers, who are humbled by their innocent welcome. But a spy disguised as a reporter has conned Jamie for information to use against the Thinkers, putting the entire conference--and the town of Pugwash--at risk." - Description
"Fighting words . . .Lainie and Mariam have it out for each other, so it's no surprise when they finally come to violent blows in the middle of their high school's drama room. That's when Caddell Morris, an ex-professional actor and newly minted student teacher, steps in. By teaching the girls the art of stage combat, he hopes to help them understand more about the roots and costs of violence. But when he convinces the drama teacher to let them play Mercutio and Tybalt in their school production of Romeo and Juliet, swords, words, and egos battle and clash. Can they find a way to work together?" - Description
"As the prime suspect in a workplace accident, Floyd has to get out of town fast. Pursued by the RCMP, he heads through the Rockies for Burnaby, BC, along the route of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. By the time he reaches the Pacific, Floyd has experienced changes: his gait widening, muscles bulging, sense of smell heightening.." - Description
"Put away the knives because tensions are rising in this kitchen renovation. What could help patch up a marriage better than a home renovation? Wayne thinks he's doing his wife Julie a favour by hiring a young couple to help redo the kitchen (at a fraction of the cost she'd hoped for). But Julie has higher standards in mind. John and Maggie think they've found a way to make some quick money to pay off the land John bought. John just proposed, but Maggie hasn't given her answer yet. With both couples on edge amongst themselves and with each other, everything from kitchen cabinets and coffee makers to generational differences and life choices are cause for ridicule, making a play that's hilarious and relatable." - Description
"Annie Mae's Movement explores what it must have been like to be Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a woman in a man's movement, a Canadian in America, an Aboriginal in a white-dominant culture at a time when it felt like we could really change the world. Dying under mysterious circumstances, it is still unclear what really happened to Anna Mae back in the late 70s. Instead of recounting cold facts, this play looks for the truth in examining the life and death of this remarkable Aboriginal woman; that we cannot know the consequences of our actions; that we live on in the work that we do and the people we affect long after we have passed from this world." - Description
"This brand new edition features the plays that established Sharon Pollock as a major Canadian playwright and gained her many accolades, among them, the first ever Governor General’s Award for Drama for Blood Relations in 1981. Her characters are the oppressed, from the spinster Lizzie Borden in the title play, Blood Relations, to the prisoners of One Tiger to a Hill, to Leah, "chosen" daughter/mistress of rum runner Mr. Big in Whiskey Six Cadenza." - Amazon.ca
"Two boats float aimlessly on an ocean that conceals the remains of civilization and history. One boat carries a father and daughter, the last survivors of an unspeakable catastrophe; the other carries the only hope for a new beginning. Daniel Macdonald crafts a stunning tale of myth and reality at the end of the world and at its creation." - Description
You can use the following resources to find information on titles and authors from the Prairies. Associations will likely also have news and updates that may feature interviews or prize winners.
