Canada Reads

Katherena Vermette

Katherena Vermette is the author of The Break, a Canada Reads 2017 finalist.
Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer who won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry in 2013. (CBC)

Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, the heart of the Métis nation, Winnipeg. She won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry for her first book, North End Love Songs, and her debut novel, The Break, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Vermette's other projects include The Seven Teachings Stories, a picture book series inspired by the Seven Sacred Teachings of the Anishinaabe, and this river, a short National Film Board of Canada documentary that chronicles the search for missing and murdered Indigenous women in the Winnipeg area. The Break was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017. 

A companion to The Break, Vermette's 2021 novel The Strangers, a searing exploration of race, class, inherited trauma, and matrilineal bonds, won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Books by Katherena Vermette

Interviews with Katherena Vermette

Katherena Vermette talks to Shelagh Rogers about The Break. The Break was the choice this spring for the virtual national book club, One E-read Canada.
Author Katherena Vermette brought along her baby girl Ruby when she dropped by our studio in Toronto to take The Next Chapter's Proust questionnaire.
Tracey Lindberg was joined on stage by Métis writer Katherena Vermette and Métis writer Cherie Dimaline to talk about race and representation on Canada Reads, CBC's annual battle of the books.
Katherena Vermette on her debut graphic novel, the first in the series A Girl Called Echo.
The Governor General's Award for fiction finalist pays tribute to her hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

 

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