Carving Space: Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon.

Established in 2017, the Indigenous Voices Awards honour the sovereignty of Indigenous creative voices and nurture the work of emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada.

Through generous support from hundreds of Canadians and organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, Scholastic Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, Pamela Dillon and Family Gift Fund, the awards have ushered in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVAs recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt and Tanya Tagaq. The IVAs also promote the works of unpublished writers, helping to launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.

This anthology gathers together a selection of the finalists over the past five years, highlighting some of the most pathbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and Indigenous languages. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Jordan Abel (Nisga’a) and Carleigh Baker (Métis), and scholar Madeleine Reddon (Métis), this anthology is a celebration of Indigenous storytelling that both introduces readers to emerging luminaries and returns them to treasured favourites.

JORDAN ABEL is a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize), and NISHGA (finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction).

CARLEIGH BAKER is a nêhiyaw âpihtawikosisân/Icelandic writer. Her debut short story collection Bad Endings won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2017 and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Emerging Indigenous Voices Award for fiction.

MADELEINE REDDON (Métis) is from Treaty 6 territory known currently as Edmonton, Alberta. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, located on the unceded, ancestral lands of the Musqueam people, and she is a recipient of the CGS doctoral Joseph-Armand Bombardier scholarship.