A few days after Seven Fallen Feathers by Tanya Talaga was shortlisted for the 2017 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, it’s been announced that This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has been shortlisted for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize!

The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize “recognizes Canadian writers of exceptional talent for the year’s best novel or short-story collection as selected by a three-member, independent judging panel.”

Congratulations, Leanne! View the full shortlist here.

This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of stories and songs from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. 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 Accident of Being Lost burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew.