Joshua Whitehead will visit UBC as writer in residence from January 13 to January 24
The School of Creative Writing is thrilled to welcome Joshua Whitehead as writer in residence from January 13 to January 24.
Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer, Jonny Appleseed, Making Love with the Land, and Indigiqueerness: a Conversation About Storytelling as well as the editor of Love after the End: an Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. Whitehead is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary (Treaty 7) where he is housed in the departments of English and International Indigenous Studies and is currently a Research Excellence Chair.
“It’s fantastic to have Joshua here with us for two whole weeks. As a skillful writer working in multiple genres, exploring ideas around Indigenous queerness, futurism and joy, he has many fans across campus. Our faculty, staff and students are very much looking forward to his visit,” says Assistant Professor Sarah Leavitt, who arranged for Joshua to visit UBC.
Joshua will visit classrooms, offer one-to-one consults with students and work on his own creative projects during his residency. Creative Writing students can book an appointment online starting the second week of January (students will receive a link to the registration system by email).
Everyone is invited to two public events that will provide the community an opportunity to meet and learn from Joshua on campus and online.
- Reading & Reception with Joshua Whitehead on January 13 at 3:00 pm (on campus).
- On Indigenous Joy: A Reading with Joshua Whitehead, Tenille Campbell and Kaitlyn Purcell on January 20 at 2:00 pm (online).
Learn more about Joshua
We’re excited to have Joshua visiting us and teaching our students. To learn more about Joshua, we’ve asked him to share his perspectives on teaching and mentorship, and the projects he’ll be working on during his stay.
What is something that enjoy about teaching, and what is most important to you about teaching and mentorship?
It really was not that long ago when I too was an unpublished writer seeking out mentors, workshops, writers’ guild events, and literary festival insights. I, of course, still do this but I’m a firm believer in the cyclicity of mentorship. I don’t seek to be alone in a gated literary arena. Mentorship has brought out a lot of new ideas, challenged me, infused me with creative thought—it’s a collaborative process that I deeply enjoy. And then to watch those I’ve mentored go on to get their first publications, albeit in literary journals or with a house, is truly a great delight in my life. I’m very much looking forward to meeting and making new kin with everyone at UBC.
What creative projects will you be working on while you are at UBC?
I’m currently finishing a Two-Spirit (2S) horror short story for the forthcoming Never Whistle at Night anthology as well as aiming to make considerable progress on my current novel in progress, The Stonewailers, which is a 2S apocalypse travel narrative that takes place between Alberta (Treaty 7) and southern Manitoba (Treaty 1). I have been calling it a mix between Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Marvel’s The X-Men. It’s a wild, new expression of writing in my life that is heavily influenced by Greek, Norse, and Anishinaabeg epistemologies and stories. It features two characters, Stone, a Cree (nêhiyaw) young man with the ability of telepathy (who often uses it to talk to non-humans, particularly stars as ancestors) and Pin (named after Clive Barker’s Hellraiser) a non-binary Anishinaabeg character with the ability to conjure illusions in the minds of others. They attempt to survive the journey from Calgary through to Star Mound, MB by relying on each other’s abilities, foraging, and wilderness skills whereby Stone reads the phobias of others and Pin conjures said fears to avoid any incoming human danger. Lastly, it’s very much in relationship with a lot of the Anishinaabeg and nêhiyawak epistemological research I’ve done regarding star people and creation stories from the cosmos.
