Contemporary Literature Book Club
The Contemporary Literature Book Club is a meeting group intended for the discussion of contemporary literature in the English language.
Students, faculty and staff are always welcome to join us.
The group meets once a month to discuss a work of contemporary English-language literature. For more information or to join, contact Eva von Contzen or Philomena Wolf!
Sommersemester 2026
23 April – Florence Knapp, The Names (2025)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1227, KG 1
It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends for her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the baby after him. But when faced with the decision, Cora hesitates. Going against his wishes is a risk that will have consequences, but is it right for her child to inherit his name from generations of domineering men? The choice she makes in this moment will shape the course of their lives.
Seven years later, her son is Bear, a name chosen by his sister, and one that will prove as cataclysmic as the storm from which it emerged. Or he is Julian, the name his mother set her heart on, believing it will enable him to become his own person. Or he is Gordon, named after his father and raised in his cruel image – but is there still a chance to break the mould?
21 May – David Szalay, Flesh (2025)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1227, KG 1
Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself.
In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.
18 June – Sarah Hall, Helm (2025)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1227, KG 1
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and awe, part-elemental god, part-aerial demon blasting through the sublime landscape of Northern England since the dawn of time.
Through the stories of those who’ve obsessed over Helm, an extraordinary history is formed: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate Helm, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish Helm, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture Helm – and the farmer’s daughter who fiercely loved Helm. But now Dr. Selima Sutar, surrounded by infinite clouds and measuring instruments in her observation hut, fears human pollution is killing Helm.
Rich, wild, and vital, Helm is the story of a singular life force, and of the relationship between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.
16 July – Ian McEwan, What We Can Know (2025)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1227, KG 1
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost.
Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.
Past Sessions
- 16 October– Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice (2024)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1021, KG1
It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray. - 20 November – Torrey Peters, Stag Dance (2025)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1021, KG 1
Deep in the forest, a group of restless lumberjacks working an illegal logging outfit plan a winter dance that some will volunteer to attend as women; the broadest, strongest axeman finds himself caught in a rivalry with a pretty, young jack that culminates in jealousy, betrayal and an astonishing spectacle of transition. Meanwhile, in other times and places, the gender apocalypse is brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend; an illicit boarding-school romance surfaces intrigue and cruelty; and a Las Vegas party weekend turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between a thrilling mystery man or a veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood. - 18 December – Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits (2024)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1021, KG 1
Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads.
They’re fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost: they can still recite lines from Greek tragedy when tempted by Lampo and Gelon with goatskins of wine and scraps of food.
And so an idea is born. Because, after all, you can hate the invaders but still love their poetry.
It’s audacious. It might even be dangerous. But like all the best things in life – love, friendship, art itself – it will reveal the very worst, and the very best, of what humans are capable of.
What could possibly go wrong? - 22 January – Xiaolu Guo, Call Me Ishmaelle (2025)
2 – 3 p.m. | HS 1021, KG 1
1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.
As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest.
Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick.
- 8 May– Miranda July, All Fours (2024)
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from Los Angeles to New York City. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. - 5 June – Samantha Harvey, Orbital (2023)
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. - 3 July – Sally Rooney, Intermezzo (2024)
Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.
Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.
Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.
For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking. - 24 July – Natasha Brown, Universality (2025)
Remember – words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency.
On a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar.
A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers.
- 31 October – Rachel Cusk, Parade (2024)
Midway through his life, the artist G begins to paint upside down. Eventually, he paints his wife upside down. He also makes her ugly. The paintings are a great success.
In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street. Her attacker flees, but not before turning around to contemplate her victim, like an artist stepping back from a canvas.
At the age of twenty-two, the painter G leaves home for a new life in another country, far from the disapproval of her parents. Her paintings attract the disapproval of the man she later marries.
When a mother dies, her children confront her legacy: the stories she told, the roles she assigned to them, the ways she withheld her love. Her death is a kind of freedom. - 28 November – Percival Everett, James (2024)
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. - 19 December – Ali Smith, Gliff (2024)
O brave new world, that has such people in’t.
Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.
What does it mean?
It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world.
What would that actually be like?
In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?
And what’s a horse got to do with any of this? - 30 January – Maggie Millner, Couplets (2023)
A dazzling love story in poems about one woman’s coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming undone
A woman lives an ordinary life in Brooklyn. She has a boyfriend. They share a cat. She writes poems in the prevailing style. She also has dreams: of being seduced by a throng of older women, of kissing a friend in a dorm-room closet. But the dreams are private, not real.
One night, she meets another woman at a bar, and an escape hatch swings open in the floor of her life. She falls into a consuming affair-into queerness, polyamory, kink, power and loss, humiliation and freedom, and an enormous surge of desire that lets her leave herself behind.
- 25 April – Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (2022)
What did we want? To begin with, we wanted what half the population had got by just being born.
It’s 1895. Amid laundry and bruises, Rina Pierangeli Faccio gives birth to the child of the man who raped her – the man she has been forced to marry. Unbroken, she determines to change her name and, alongside it, her life.
1902. Romaine Brooks sails for Capri. She has barely enough money for the ferry, nothing for lunch; her paintbrushes are bald and clotted. But she is sure she can sell a painting – and is fervent in her belief that the island is detached from all fates she has previously suffered.
In 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: I want to make life fuller – and fuller.
Told in a series of cascading vignettes, featuring a multitude of voices, After Sappho reimagines the lives of a brilliant group of feminists, sapphists, artists and writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as they battle for liberation, justice and control over their own lives. - 16 May – Warsan Shire, Bless the Daugther Raised by a Voice in Her Head (2022)
Mama, I made it
out of your home,
alive, raised by the
voices in my head.
With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way towards womanhood. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. In Shire’s hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. - 13 June – Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface (2023)
Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault. - 11 July – Henry Hoke, Open Throat (2023)
A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days protecting the welfare of a nearby homeless encampment, observing obnoxious hikers complain about their trauma, and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their gender identity, memories of a vicious father, and the indignities of sentience. “I have so much language in my brain,” our lion says, “and nowhere to put it.”
When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call “ellay.” As the lion confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles and the toll of climate grief, while scrambling to avoid earthquakes, floods, and the noise of their own conflicted psyche. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?
Reading Games
… as in „we are reading games,“ not as if a series of gamified reading sessions – is a book club for video games instead of books!
If you like playing or discussing video games, why don’t you join us in our monthly sessions? We’ll meet once a month, either in person or on our Discord server, to discuss selected games through a plethora of lenses from cultural to narrative analysis!
You don’t need prior knowledge of video games; the only thing we want is that you come excited and willing to discuss the game because you either played it, watched someone else play it, or are simply curious about how games can work as cultural texts. Also, we might play some TTRPGs, too!
Do you think this is the space for you? Then we are excited to have you!
For more information or questions, please contact Mariana Antunes.
Sommersemester 2026 – Theme: MEDIEVALISM
27 May – Yes, Your Grace (2020)
6 p.m. | online session
Yes, Your Grace tells a tale of Davern, a medieval kingdom ruled by King Eryk. The game is set in a fictional world where monsters and arcane practices inspired by Slavic folklore are the order of the day. Villagers will ask for your help with various problems, from monsters attacking the village to a lack of places to relax and enjoy themselves. Some will bring humour to your throne room and some will present you with difficult choices. Your family is important too, and throughout your time as King, you will have to support them in their struggles.
You will face lords with a variety of personalities; you will need their support in order to win an upcoming battle, but some may ask you to perform dirty deeds to cement the alliance. One thing is clear: It won’t be easy to keep everyone happy…
17 June – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
6 p.m. | room 4008, KG IV
You are Geralt of Rivia, mercenary monster slayer. Before you stands a war-torn, monster-infested continent you can explore at will. Your current contract? Tracking down Ciri — the Child of Prophecy, a living weapon that can alter the shape of the world.
22 July – A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019)
6 p.m. | room 4008, KG IV
Follow the grim tale of young Amicia and her little brother Hugo, in a heartrending journey through the darkest hours of history.
19 August – The Sims Medieval (2011)
6 p.m. | online session
If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be king, The Sims Medieval lets you do just that! Build your own kingdom and choose your quests as you go about creating tales filled with comedy, conflict, drama and romance. Several features make The Sims Medieval distinct from the previous Sims games, including options to play every Sims character in the medieval era, and not just the one Sim of the household. A magic system allows you to learn wizarding tricks, while the crafting system takes you through the lives of blacksmiths. You can also be a diplomat and negotiate matters of trade and war on other surrounding kingdoms.
Past sessions
- November 18 | Slay the Princess (2023) [Let’s Play Session]
You’re on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess.You’re here to slay her. If you don’t, it will be the end of the world.
She will do everything in her power to stop you. She’ll charm, and she’ll lie, and she’ll promise you the world, and if you let her, she’ll kill you a dozen times over. You can’t let that happen. Don’t forget, the fate of the world rests on your shoulders.
You’re not going to listen to him, are you? We’re supposed to save princesses, not slay them… - December 9 | Dordogne (2023)
Immerse yourself in a unique narrative experience, embarking on a vibrant journey that will awaken your senses and evoke warm memories.
Play as Mimi, exploring the precious recollections of your childhood and the times shared with your late grandmother. As past meets present, confront your adult choices with fond childhood memories to uncover lost family secrets.
Explore Dordogne landscapes of a thousand summer colors, within sumptuous hand-painted watercolor environments. - January 13 | The Berlin Apartment (2025)
Dilara joins her father Malik, a handyman tasked with refurbishing an old apartment in the city of Berlin, Germany. In the course of their extensive renovation work, Dilara digs deeper and deeper into the history of the apartment. Relics from past times turn out to be silent witnesses and former companions of the apartment’s previous inhabitants. With each new find, Malik tells his daughter the story behind this trace of a past adventure – with its own protagonists, its own genre, and its own atmosphere, yet always set within the same four walls. - Februrary 10 | A Space for the Unbound (2023)
A Space for the Unbound is a slice-of-life adventure game with beautiful pixel art set in the late 90s rural Indonesia that tells a story about overcoming anxiety, depression, and the relationship between a boy and a girl with supernatural powers.
Set in a small town inspired by 90s era rural Indonesia, A Space for the Unbound presents an endearing story-driven experience with a vibrant environment waiting to be explored.
- May 13 | The Exit 8 (2023)
You are trapped in an endless underground passageway. Observe your surroundings carefully to reach „The Exit 8“ - June 10 | Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015)
Immerse yourself in a rich, deep adventure from award-winning developer The Chinese Room and investigate the last days of Yaughton Valley. Uncover the traces of the vanished community; discover fragments of events and memories to piece together the mystery of the apocalypse. - July 15 | Blue Prince (2025)
Welcome to Mt. Holly, where every dawn unveils a new mystery. Navigate through shifting corridors and ever-changing chambers in this genre-defying strategy puzzle adventure. But will your unpredictable path lead you to the rumored Room 46? - August 12 | Before Your Eyes (2021)
The story begins after your death, aboard the ship of a mythical Ferryman tasked with shepherding souls to the afterlife. In order to help you pass on, he must first learn the story of your life. And so, he sends you back to relive your most important moments - The selected reading for these sessions is recommended to participants who want to engage with the selected games on a more critical level: Gregory Whistance-Smith – Expressive: Space: Embodying Meaning in Video Game Environments (2022)
- February 11 | Immortality (2022)
Marissa Marcel was a film star. She made three movies.But none of the movies were ever released. And Marissa Marcel disappeared. - March 11 | Killer Frequency (2023)
Killer Frequency is a first-person horror puzzle game set in 1987, that puts you in the role of a late-night radio talk show host in small town America whose callers are being stalked by a mysterious killer. - April 8 | Not for Broadcast (2020)
A new political Party has won a landslide in the General Election, and for some reason the editor at the news station you work at has done a runner. Now it’s up to you, the Janitor, to take over the editing booth in this tumultuous time – will you help the government, or stand in their way? - The selected reading for these sessions is recommended to participants who want to engage with the selected games on a more critical level: Joachim Friedmann – Narratives Crossing Boundaries
- September 11 | Untitled Goose Game (2019)
Let’s Play Session: It’s a lovely morning in the village and you are a horrible goose. - October 9 | Stray (2022)
Lost, alone and separated from family, a stray cat must untangle an ancient mystery to escape a long-forgotten cybercity and find their way home. - November 13 | NUTS (2021)
NUTS is a single-player walking simulator surveillance mystery. Record the squirrels, report your findings, and piece together what’s really going on in Melmoth Forest. - December 11 | Beyond Blue (2020)
Beyond Blue is a single-player narrative adventure that takes you deep into our planet’s beating blue heart. Explore the awesome wonder and unbounded mystery that exists within the world’s ocean. - The selected reading for these sessions is recommended to participants who want to engage with the selected games on a more critical level: Tom Tyler – Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity (2022)
Indigenous Reads
Your monthly book club dedicated to contemporary Indigenous literature – Everybody is welcome!
Indigenous Reads is a literature colloquium dedicated to very contemporary literature by Indigenous writers from Turtle Island. We meet monthly to discuss the texts and their socio-historical implications. The setting is friendly and informal; it resembles a book club more than a university course. We gather students, staff, and local guests, the only requirement being to read the books.
More information can be found on: www.lenaremykovach.com/indigenousreads
Winter 2025 & Spring 2026
26 April – Erika T. Wurth, The Haunting of Room 904 (2025)
5.30 pm | Zoom
Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits.
A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can’t explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia’s investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.
24 May – Laurie L. Dove, Mask of the Deer Woman (2025)
5.30 pm | Zoom
At rock bottom following her daughter’s murder, ex-Chicago detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation that raised him, but they need a new tribal marshal as much as Starr needs a place to call home.
In the last decade, too many young women have disappeared from the rez. Some dead, others just… gone. Now, local college student Chenoa Cloud is missing, and Starr falls into an investigation that leaves her drowning in memories of her daughter—the girl she failed to save.
Starr feels lost in this place she thought would welcome her. And when she catches a glimpse of a figure from her father’s stories, with the body of a woman and the antlers of a deer, Starr can’t shake the feeling that the fearsome spirit is watching her, following her.
What she doesn’t know is whether Deer Woman is here to guide her or to seek vengeance for the lost daughters that Starr can never bring home.
28 June – Dennis E. Staples, Passing Through a Prairie Country (2025)
5.30 pm | Zoom
For decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Spoken of only in whispers as “the sandman,” he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the reservation’s main attraction and source of revenue, leeching its patrons’ dreams and preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a midtwenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine’s siren song. Here he falls afoul of the sandman, an encounter he barely escapes through the timely intervention of his cousins Alana and Cherie, who both work at the casino and are intimately aware of the sandman’s power. Meanwhile, Glenn Nielan, recently out of the closet and an aspiring documentarian, hopes to capture the faces of the Ojibwe land while experiencing the casino’s thrills. But he will learn that all who choose to play the sandman’s games are in danger of falling into his grasp.
Marion and Alana are members of the Bullhead clan, a family with ties to a sacred past and a fierce determination to ensure their future. Alana, with her sevenfire sight, is the only person to fully understand the danger the sandman poses. Aware of Marion’s occasional ability to navigate the spirit world, she enlists his aid in defeating this wraith. But the power and reach of the sandman go far beyond Alana’s worst fears. Soon she and Marion find themselves in a battle for their lives and for the souls of the reservation’s residents, both the living and the dead.
Past sessions
- November 16 – the Strangers by Katherena Vermette (2021)
5.30 pm | Zoom
Cedar has nearly forgotten what her family looks like. Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly.
After time spent in foster homes, Cedar goes to live with her estranged father. Although she grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and sister, Phoenix, she’s hoping for a new chapter in her life, only to find herself once again in a strange house surrounded by strangers. From a youth detention centre, Phoenix gives birth to a baby she’ll never get to raise and tries to forgive herself for all the harm she’s caused (while wondering if she even should). Elsie, struggling with addiction and determined to turn her life around, is buoyed by the idea of being reunited with her daughters and strives to be someone they can depend on, unlike her own distant mother. These are the Strangers, each haunted in her own way. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that pretends to offer success but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, they urge one another to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they’ll ever emerge safely on the other side. - January 11 – Apple / Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth (2020)
5.30 pm | Zoom
Eric Gansworth tells the story of his life, of an Onondaga family living among Tuscaroras, and of Native people in America, including the damaging legacy of government boarding schools—and in doing so grapples with the slur common in Native communities, for someone “red on the outside, white on the inside,” and reclaims it. - February 22 – it was never going to be okay by jaye simpson (2020)
5.30 pm | Zoom
it was never going to be okay is a collection of poetry and prose exploring the intimacies of understanding intergenerational trauma, Indigeneity and queerness, while addressing urban Indigenous diaspora and breaking down the limitations of sexual understanding as a trans woman. As a way to move from the linear timeline of healing and coming to terms with how trauma does not exist in subsequent happenings, it was never going to be okay tries to break down years of silence. - April 4 – Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (2022)
5.30 pm | Zoom
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson, and thinks he is her dead brother come back to life; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.
- Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (2021)
Eighteen-year-old Daunis has always felt like an outsider with her mixed heritage, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. When she witnesses a murder, Daunis reluctantly agrees to go undercover. But secretly she pursues her own investigation, tracking down the culprits with her knowledge of traditional medicine. As the bodies pile up, Daunis finds herself caught in a web of deceit that threatens the people she loves the most. - Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch (2020)
The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it—an urgent work of literary journalism. Drawing on eight years of immersive investigation, Sierra Crane Murdoch has produced a profound examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing. - The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson (2021)
A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, it is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.
- Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford (2020)
It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women, presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church – a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter, until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. Crooked Hallelujah tells the stories of Justine – a mixed-blood Cherokee woman – and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma’s Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn’t easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world–of unreliable men and near-Biblical natural forces, like wildfires and tornados–intent on stripping away their connections to one another and their very ideas of home. - This Town Sleeps by Dennis E. Staples (2020)
Elegant and gritty, angry and funny. Staples’s work is emotional without being sentimental. Dennis unmakes something in us, then remakes it, a quilt of characters that embody this town, this place, which sleeps but doesn’t dream, or it is all a dream we want to wake up from with its characters. Set on a reservation in far northern Minnesota, This Town Sleeps explores the many ways history, culture, landscape, and lineage shape our lives, our understanding of the world we inhabit, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of it all. - The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (2020)
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman. - Black Water by David A. Robertson (2020)
The son of a Cree father and a non-Indigenous mother, David A. Robertson was raised with virtually no knowledge or understanding of his family’s Indigenous roots. Structured around a father-son journey to the northern trapline where Robertson and his father will reclaim their connection to the land, Black Water is the story of another journey: a young man seeking to understand his father’s story, to come to terms with his lifelong experience with anxiety, and to finally piece together his own blood memory, the parts of his identity that are woven into the fabric of his DNA. - Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (2021)
Jared, teenaged trouble magnet, wakes up in a hospital bed feeling like hell. Not for the first time. In the third book of her brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy, Eden Robinson delivers an explosive, surprising and satisfying resolution to the story.
- Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (2020)
A groundbreaking thriller about a vigilante on a Native American reservation who embarks on a dangerous mission to track down the source of a heroin influx, and a brilliant meditation on power and violence. - Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (2020)
Set in a version of our contemporary world where everyone knows ghosts, fairies, and vampires are real, this breathtaking debut novel combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knwoledge, haunting illustrations, and fantasy elements. - There There by Tommy Orange (2018)
The chorus of 12 voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American–grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. - Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020)
Crafted with unforgettable characters, this epic adventure explores the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts.
- Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson (2017)
Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who’s often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon. Jared does smoke and drink too much, and he does make the best cookies in town, and his mom is a mess, but he’s also a kid who has an immense capacity for compassion and an impulse to watch over people more than twice his age, and he can’t rely on anyone for consistent love and support, except for his flatulent pit bull, Baby Killer (he calls her Baby) – and now she’s dead. Jared can’t count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can’t rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family’s life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat…and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he’s the son of a trickster, that he isn’t human. Mind you, ravens speak to him – even when he’s not stoned. You think you know Jared, but you don’t. - Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese (2012)
Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it only through telling his story. With him, readers embark on a journey back through the life he’s led as a northern Ojibway, with all its joys and sorrows. With compassion and insight, the author traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture and a cultural way. For Saul, taken forcibly from the land and his family when he’s sent to residential school, salvation comes for a while through his incredible gifts as a hockey player. But in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles obdurate racism and the spirit-destroying effects of cultural alienation and displacement. Indian Horse unfolds against the bleak loveliness of northern Ontario, all rock, marsh, bog and cedar. Wagamese writes with a spare beauty, penetrating the heart of a remarkable Ojibway man. - Coyote Christmas: A Lakota Story by S.D. Nelson (2007)
On Christmas Eve on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, Coyote wants to find some people to trick out of a hot meal. Sneaky Coyote is known by American Indians as the Trickster. He knows that there’s one person people can’t refuse on Christmas Eve: Santa Claus! In red rags and a woolly Santa’s beard, the Trickster fools a family into welcoming him to their Christmas dinner. But just when he thinks he’s gotten away with his ruse, taking their food and leaving the family with nothing, he’s foiled by a strange occurrence. Could it be a Christmas miracle? - Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson (2018)
In an effort to keep all forms of magic at bay, Jared has quit drugs and drinking. But his troubles are not over: now he’s being stalked by David, his mom’s ex – a preppy, khaki-wearing psycho with a proclivity for rib-breaking. And his mother, a living, breathing badass as well as a witch, can’t protect him like she used to because he’s moved away from Kitimat to Vancouver for school. Even though he’s got a year of sobriety under his belt (no thanks to his enabling, ever-partying mom), Jared also struggles with the temptation of drinking. And he’s got to get his grades up, find a job that doesn’t involve weed cookies, and somehow live peacefully with his Aunt Mave, who has been estranged from the family ever since she tried to „rescue“ him as a baby from his mother. An indigenous activist and writer, Mave smothers him with pet names and hugs, but she is blind to the real dangers that lurk around them – the spirits and supernatural activity that fill her apartment. As the son of a Trickster, Jared is a magnet for magic, whether he hates it or not – he sees ghosts, he sees the monster moving underneath his Aunt Georgina’s skin, he sees the creature that comes out of his bedroom wall and creepily wants to suck his toes. He also still hears the Trickster in his head, and other voices too. When the David situation becomes a crisis, Jared can’t ignore his true nature any longer. - Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems by Joy Harjo (2017)
In these poems, the joys and struggles of the everyday are played against the grinding politics of being human. Beginning in a hotel room in the dark of a distant city, we travel through history and follow the memory of the Trail of Tears from the bend in the Tallapoosa River to a place near the Arkansas River. Stomp dance songs, blues, and jazz ballads echo throughout. Lost ancestors are recalled. Resilient songs are born, even as they grieve the loss of their country. - The Removed by Brandon Hobson (2021)
Steeped in Cherokee myths and history, a novel about a fractured family reckoning with the tragic death of their son long ago. In the fifteen years since their teenage son, Ray-Ray, was killed in a police shooting, the Echota family has been suspended in private grief. The mother, Maria, increasingly struggles to manage the onset of Alzheimer’s in her husband, Ernest. Their adult daughter, Sonja, leads a life of solitude, punctuated only by spells of dizzying romantic obsession. And their son, Edgar, fled home long ago, turning to drugs to mute his feelings of alienation. With the family’s annual bonfire approaching – an occasion marking both the Cherokee National Holiday and Ray-Ray’s death, and a rare moment in which they openly talk about his memory – Maria attempts to call the family together from their physical and emotional distances once more. But as the bonfire draws near, each of them feels a strange blurring of the boundary between normal life and the spirit world. Maria and Ernest take in a foster child who seems to almost miraculously keep Ernest’s mental fog at bay. Sonja becomes dangerously fixated on a man named Vin, despite – or perhaps because of – his ties to tragedy in her lifetime and lifetimes before. And in the wake of a suicide attempt, Edgar finds himself in the mysterious Darkening Land: a place between the living and the dead, where old atrocities echo. Drawing deeply on Cherokee folklore, this novel seamlessly blends the real and spiritual to excavate the deep reverberations of trauma – a meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level.
- Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (2018)
The setting is a post-apocalyptic world rife with poverty, crime, violence, betrayal, and hunger. The novel takes place after most of the world is destroyed through a massive flood known as the Great Water. The Navajo Reservation, known as Dinétah, survives as an independent community surrounded by a massive wall built by humans and Diné gods. It is within this arena that Diné gods, heroes, tricksters, humans, witches, and monsters live, interact and die. - Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time ed. by Hope Nicholson (2016)
A collection of indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and two-spirit characters. These stories range from a transgender woman undergoing an experimental transition process to young lovers separated through decades and meeting in their own far future. These are stories of machines and magic, love and self-love. - Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq (2018)
Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. In the end, there may be no difference between them. A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents‘ love. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this. Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, victim and transgressor, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains. Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, and tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget.
- Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead (2018)
»“You’re gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine“ is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling novel. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order 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 next seven days are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny’s world is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages–and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, 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.« - This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017)
»A knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from the award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer. These visionary pieces build upon Simpson’s powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love. Provocateur and poet, she continually rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization. A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while texting „ARE THEY GETTING IT?“; lovers visit the last remaining corner of the boreal forest; three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in an upper middle-class neighbourhood; and Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario. Blending elements of Nishnaabeg storytelling, science fiction, contemporary realism, and the lyric voice, this book burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew. - Those Who Run in the Sky by Aviaq Johnston (2017)
Teen novel, written by the Iqaluit-based Inuit author. A coming-of-age story that follows a young shaman named Pitu as he learns to use his powers and ultimately finds himself lost in the world of the spirits. After a strange and violent blizzard leaves Pitu stranded on the sea ice, without his dog team or any weapons to defend himself, he soon realizes that he is no longer in the word that he once knew. The storm has carried him into the world of the spirits, a world populated with terrifying creatures – black wolves with red eyes, ravenous and constantly stalking him; water-dwelling creatures that want nothing more than to snatch him and pull him into the frigid ocean through an ice crack. As well as beings less frightening, but equally as incredible, such as a lone giant who can carry Pitu in the palm of her hand and keeps caribou and polar bears as pets. After stumbling upon a fellow shaman who has been trapped in the spirit world for many years, Pitu must master all of his shamanic powers to make his way back to the world of the living, to his family, and to the girl that he loves. - Catching Teller Crow by Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina (2018)
In honor of Survival Day for Aboriginal peoples in Australia
Nothing’s been the same for Beth Teller since she died. Her dad, a detective, is the only one who can see and hear her, and he’s drowning in grief. Only a suspected murder, and a mystery to solve, might save them both. And they have a potential witness: Isobel Catching. Aboriginal by birth, like Beth, she seems lost and isolated in the world. But as the two get closer, Isobel’s strange tale of glass-eyed monsters and stolen colours will intertwine with Beth’s investigation – and reveal something dark and terrible at the heart of this Australian town… - Flood Song by Sherwin Bitsui (2009)
Native traditions scrape against contemporary urban life in this poetry collection, an interweaving painterly sequence populated with wrens and reeds, bricks and gasoline. Highly imagistic and constantly in motion, the poems draw variously upon medicine song and contemporary language and poetics.
- Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (2018)
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision. Blending action and allegory, the book upends expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn. - Birdie by Tracey Lindberg (2015)
A darkly comic and moving first novel about the universal experience of recovering from wounds of the past, informed by the lore and knowledge of Cree traditions. Bernice Meetoos, a Cree woman, leaves her home in Northern Alberta following tragedy and travels to Gibsons, BC. She is on something of a vision quest, seeking to understand the messages from The Frugal Gourmet (one of the only television shows available on CBC North) that come to her in her dreams. She is also driven by the leftover teenaged desire to meet Pat Johns, who played Jesse on The Beachcombers, because he is, as she says, a working, healthy Indian man. Bernice heads for Molly’s Reach to find answers but they are not the ones she expected. With the arrival in Gibsons of her Auntie Val and her cousin Skinny Freda, Bernice finds the strength to face the past and draw the lessons from her dreams that she was never fully taught in life. Part road trip, dream quest and travelogue, the novel touches on the universality of women’s experience, regardless of culture or race. - All the Way: My Life on Ice by Jordin Tootoo (2014)
It tells the story of someone who has travelled far from home to realize a dream, someone who has known glory and cheering crowds, but also the demons of despair. It is the searing, honest tale of a young man who has risen to every challenge and nearly fallen short in the toughest game of all, while finding a way to draw strength from his community and heritage, and giving back to it as well. - The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (2017)
In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the „recruiters“ who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing „factories.“
- The Break by Katherena Vermette (2016)
A powerful intergenerational family saga. 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. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Métis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg’s North End is exposed. - Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson (2018)
Set in rural Oklahoma during the late 1980s, this is a startling, authentically voiced and lyrically written Native American coming-of-age story. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care. Literally and figuratively scarred by his mother’s years of substance abuse, Sequoyah keeps mostly to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface. At least until he meets seventeen-year-old Rosemary, a troubled artist who also lives with the family. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American background and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah’s feelings toward Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both. - Three Feathers by Richard Van Camp (2016)
Three young men – Flinch, Bryce, and Rupert – have vandalized their community and are sent by its Elders to live nine months on the land as part of the circle sentencing process. There, the young men learn to take responsibility for their actions and acquire the humility required to return home. But, when they do return, will they be forgiven for what they’ve done? The book explores the power and grace of restorative justice in one Northern community and the cultural legacy that can empower future generations. - If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth (2013)
A wry and powerful YA novel about friendship, memory, and the joy of rock ’n‘ roll. Lewis „Shoe“ Blake is used to the joys and difficulties of life on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in 1975: the joking, the Fireball games, the snow blowing through his roof. What he’s not used to is white people being nice to him – people like George Haddonfield, whose family recently moved to town with the Air Force. As the boys connect through their mutual passion for music, especially the Beatles, Lewis has to lie more and more to hide the reality of his family’s poverty from George. He also has to deal with the vicious Evan Reininger, who makes Lewis the special target of his wrath. But when everyone else is on Evan’s side, how can he be defeated? And if George finds out the truth about Lewis’s home – will he still be his friend?