Conor Kerr — новинки

Métis cousins Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther have beef with their world. With the latest racist policy rolling out. With whatever new pipeline plowing through traditional territory. With the way a treaty (aka, the army) forced the Papaschase Cree off their home on the prairie. And, on the other hand, with how Grey’s friends think if they all just went back to the Rez or the settlement, life would be so much better—pretty, like an Instagram ad. Then there’s the warming planet. And their future, which they seem to be screwing up quite well on their own. Being alive can’t be all cribbage, Lucky Lager, and swiping the occasional catalytic converter.

One night, the cousins hatch a plan to capture a herd of bison from a nearby national park and release them in downtown Edmonton. They want to be seen, be heard, and to disrupt the settler routines of the city, yet they have no idea what awaits them or the fateful consequences their actions have. Balancing wit and sorrow in a work of satire, social commentary, and whip-smart storytelling, Prairie Edge follows Ezzy and Grey’s inspired misadventures as their zealous ideas about bringing about real change do indeed elicit change, just in unexpected and sometimes disastrous ways.

Conor Kerr imagines a web of Métis relationships strained by dislocation, poverty, violence, and cultural drift, but he also laces the ties that bind Ezzy and Grey—and forever bind the Métis to the land—to explore the radical possibility that a couple of inspired miscreants might actually have the power to make a difference.

Métis Ukrainian writer Conor Kerr’s sharp and incisive poems move restlessly across landscapes and time. Conor Kerr’s poetry is in constant motion. 4Runners streak through the night, racing with coyotes and roving across the land. Buses travel from town to town, from one memory to another, from past to present. Friends and lovers search for each other on Instagram and find nothing. And always the natural world travels the watching magpies, woodpeckers and cedar waxwings, the coyotes and porcupines. Family is the crisp wings of mallard ducks flying at dawn, just as it is a game of crib, a Mario Kart race, a dance party. Old Gods defies colonialism on the Prairies. Kerr situates his reader in the Métis the old gods of the land are alive within the rivers, the birds, the hills and the prairies that surround us, and they’ll always be here.

Daniel is a young Métis man searching for a way to exist in a world of lateral violence, intergenerational trauma and systemic racism. Facing obstacles of his own at every turn, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends, teachers and lovers. He finds hope in the inherent connection of Indigenous Peopls to the land, and the permanence of culture, language and ceremony in the face of displacement.

Set in Edmonton, this story considers Indigenous youth in relation to the urban constructs and colonial spaces in which they survive—from violence, whitewashing, trauma and racism to language revitalization, relationships with Elders, restaking land claims and ultimately, triumph. Based on Papaschase and Métis oral histories and lived experience, Conor Kerr’s debut novel will not soon be forgotten.


Prize(s): Short-listed Amazon Canada First Novel Award (2022), Short-listed ReLit Award (Novel) (2022), Winner ReLit Award (Novel) (2022)