This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories

This Accident of Being Lost is the knife-sharp new collection of short fiction and poetry from award-winning Nishnaabeg storyteller and writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Simpson is both provocateur and poet, at once unapologetic and compassionate as her characters cast off the judgement of others while they pursue decolonial futures on their own terms. Building upon her powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love, these visionary pieces argue for the value of getting lost as a way to discover an inner strength more important than being found. A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario considers flooding Toronto to remake the world; 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.