Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. He’s also an acclaimed and award-winning essayist and public speaker. His work is published in 25 languages.

After publishing his short story collection, Born With A Tooth in 2001, his debut novel, Three Day Road, was published in 2005 and quickly became an international bestseller. Chosen by Isabel Allende for The Today Show Book Club, it won numerous awards including the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Amazon First Novel Award, and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year.

Boyden’s second novel, the international bestseller, Through Black Spruce, published in 2008, won Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, the Scotiabank Giller, and both the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Book of the Year and Author of the Year awards; In 2018, director Don McKellar debuted Through Black Spruce as a major motion picture at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Joseph’s third novel, the international bestseller, The Orenda, was published in 2013 and won Canada Reads in 2014, as well as Libris’ Novel and Author of the year. In 2015 The Orenda was awarded France’s Prix Literaire du Monde and the France/Canada Prize. It was also a finalist for the Governor General’s English Language Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Award.

His novella Wenjack, published in 2016, became a bestseller and was highly praised by critics and readers alike.

In 2012, Boyden received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his contributions to Canadian art and culture. Made a member of The Order of Canada in 2016, Joseph’s also been honoured with five honorary doctorates.

With over 25 years of teaching experience, he’s been a member of the creative writing faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing Program, as well as a visiting writer at numerous universities across North America, including Humber School for Writers. He has taught countless half-day, one-day, and week-long workshops throughout North America, and for over a decade he was a professor and the writer-in-residence at the University of New Orleans.

An honorary witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Joseph was asked by the TRC and Royal Winnipeg Ballet to write Going Home Star, a ballet that debuted in 2014 and subsequently travelled across Canada and internationally. In 2015, Joseph gathered 100 artists to collaborate in the anthology Kwe: Standing With Our Sisters with all proceeds going to the families of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women. Joseph sits on the board of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. He and his partner, Laura Vukson, live with their two sons in West Grey, Ontario.