Joshua
Whitehead
Joshua Whitehead is the author of the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer, which was shortlisted for an inaugural Indigenous Voices Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. His novel Jonny Appleseed was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, and is a 2021 contender for CBC Canada Reads. His work has been published in Prairie Fire, CV2, EVENT, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CNQ, and Red Rising Magazine. Whitehead is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation on Treaty 1 in Manitoba. He is currently working toward a PhD in Indigenous literatures and cultures at the University of Calgary on Treaty 7 territory in Alberta.
Award History
2018 Finalist
Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging WritersJury Citation
“Joshua Whitehead harnesses queerness, Indigeneity, and reclamation to articulate storytelling’s invaluable role in challenging the intelligentsia. In his collection, Full-Metal Indigiqueer, Whitehead plays particular attention to acknowledging ancestral connection and the body; he fuses Indigiqueer wisdom through the infinite potential of poetics and personhood. His debut novel, Jonny Appleseed, is provocative, compelling, and fiercely intersectional. Whitehead is a radical hybrid thinker, and a bold new voice who brings the deep past into the boundless present, which extends into a not so faraway future. Whitehead builds worlds within words.” -- 2018 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers Jury (Ali Blythe, Greg Kearney, and Shannon Webb-Campbell)
