This event will be catered by Edmonton's own Chef Holly Holt (@shecooksyeg)

Featuring: Chyana Marie Sage, Quill Christie-Peters and Kate J. Neville
Moderator: Anna Marie Sewell
Tickets: $30

Soft As Bones, by Chyana Marie Sage

A poetic memoir as intricately woven as a dreamcatcher about overcoming the pain of generational trauma with the power of traditional healing.

In candid, incisive, and delicate prose, Chyana Marie Sage shares the pain of growing up with her father, a crack dealer who went to prison for molesting her older sister. In revisiting her family's history, Chyana examines the legacy of generational abuse, which began with her father's father, who was forcibly removed from his family by the residential schools and Sixties Scoop programs. Yet hers is also a story of hope, as it was the traditions of her people that saved her life, healing one small piece in the mosaic that makes up the dark past of colonialism shared by Indigenous people throughout Turtle Island.

On Wholeness, by Quill Christie-Peters

A brilliant exploration of the body as a site of settler colonial impact, centring embodied wholeness as a pathway to our collective liberation.

Through reflections on childbirth, parenting, creative practice, and expansive responsibility as pathways to wholeness, Anishinaabe visual artist Quill Christie-Peters explores how reconnecting with the body can be an act of resistance and healing. She shows that wholeness—despite pain and displacement—is not just possible but essential for liberation, not only for Indigenous people but for all of us.

In poetic and raw storytelling, Quill shares her own experiences of gendered violence and her father's survival of residential school, revealing how colonialism disconnects us from ourselves. Yet, through an Anishinaabe lens, the body is more than just flesh—it extends to ancestors, homelands, spirit relations, and animal kin.

This fierce and enlightening book reimagines the way we understand settler colonialism—through the body itself. On Wholeness takes us on a journey that begins before birth, in a realm where ancestors and spirits swirl like smoke in the great beyond.

Going to Seed: Essay on Idleness, Nature and Sustainable Work, by Kate J. Neville

An abandoned place, a disheveled person, a shabby or deteriorating state: we describe such ruin colloquially as "going to seed." But gardeners will protest: going to seed as idle? No, plants are sending out compressed packets filled with the energy needed to sow new life. A pause from flowering gives a chance for the seeds to form. In a time of urgent environmental change, of pressing social injustice, and of ever-advancing technologies and global connections, we often respond with acceleration—a speeding up and scaling up of our strategies to counter the damage and destruction around us. But what if we take the seeds as a starting point: what might we learn about work, sustainability, and relationships on this beleaguered planet if we slowed down, stepped back, and held off?

Going to Seed explores questions of idleness, considering the labour both of humans and of the myriad other inhabitants of the world. Drawing on science, literature, poetry, and personal observation, these winding and sometimes playful essays pay attention to the exertions and activities of the other-than-human lives that are usually excluded from our built and settled spaces, asking whose work and what kinds of work might be needed for a more just future for all.

KATE NEVILLE is an associate professor in Political Science and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, where she studies global energy and resource politics, and community resistance. When not in Toronto, Kate can be found in a cabin in northern British Columbia, on the territory of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation.

QUILL CHRISTIE-PETERS is an Anishinaabe educator and self-taught visual artist from Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation located in Treaty 3 territory. She is the creator and director of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a master's degree in Indigenous governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love. She has spoken at Stanford University, the University of Toronto, and California College of the Arts, and her written work can be found in GUTS magazine and Canadian Art. She is also a mother, beadwork artist, and traditional tattoo practitioner following the protocols of her community. All of her work can be found at @raunchykwe.

CHYANA MARIE SAGE is a Cree, Métis, and Salish writer from Edmonton, Alberta. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University and lives in New York City. Chyana loves to travel and be with nature.

HOLLY HOLT (Chef/Caterer) is an award-winning Chef based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has 15 years experience in the culinary arts and over 20 years of experience in hospitality. She is a proud graduate of NAIT's Culinary Art's program and loves to continue learning everyday. Holly is the In-House Chef for the Yellowhead Tribal Council and collaborates with EPL as an instructor in The Kitchen. She is also the owner of SheCooks, which offers catering, instructional and consulting services. Her expertise is in contemporary Indigenous cuisine, nutrition and plant-forward cooking. Holly takes pride in her professional, friendly and dynamic approach when working with the community. Holly Holt is a proud Syilx Okanagan woman (SnPink'tn or the Penticton Indian Band) and connects with her culture through food and art. When she is not in the kitchen, she enjoys beading, reading, walking her dogs, self care, hiking, camping, yoga, plants, travelling, art, film and learning.

ANNA MARIE SEWELL (Moderator) is the author of Urbane, (novel, Stonehouse Publishing 2023), Humane(novel, Stonehouse Publishing 2020), For the Changing Moon: Poems & Songs (Thistledown Press, 2018) and Fifth World Drum (poetry) Frontenac House, 2009). Notable collaborations include At First Light (2022), Journey Song (2020), By Heart (2019), Ancestors&Elders (2018), Reconciling Edmonton (2015) and her work as Edmonton's 4th Poet Laureate. Raised pre-TRC in a defiantly mixed family – Polish/Mi'gmaq/Anishinaabe – Sewell is a member of Listuguj Mi'gmaq First Nation, who lives in Amiskwaciy/Edmonton and works globally. Connect with Anna Marie Sewell's work via prairiepomes.com.

To reserve tickets to this event, please email our Ticket Coordinator, Cait Yaga at events@litfestalberta.org