PRAIRIE EDGE

PRAIRIE EDGE deftly weaves through the fateful and sometimes fatal consequences of Métis kin on their politically driven bison run.

Meet Isadore “Ezzy” Dejarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant cousins making the most of Grey's uncle's old cabin, passing their dog days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking open cans of Lucky's in between. A cynical insurgent who foregoes the performative activist culture of her university years in exchange for real change, Grey enlists the capable and ever-willing Ezzy one night for a dangerous yet bold political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free onto the sprawling concrete of downtown Edmonton, thereby disrupting the costly churn of settler routine. But little do these Métis kin know what future awaits them and the herd they relocate, and the novel deftly weaves through the fateful and sometimes fatal consequences of their bison run.

Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian educator, writer and harvester. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, part of the Edmonton Indigenous community, and is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne & Fort Des Prairies Métis communities and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family settled in Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. In 2019, Conor received The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry award. In 2021, Conor received The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize. His writing has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories 2020, Best Canadian Poetry 2020, and has appeared in literary magazines across Canada. He is the author of Avenue of Champions (Nightwood Editions) and An Explosion of Feathers (Bookland Press).