Holy Wild
- Publisher
- Book*hug Press
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2018
- Subjects
- LGBT, Women Authors, Native American
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781771664400
- Publish Date
- Sep 2018
Library Ordering Options
Description
Winner of the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry
Finalist for the 2019 Trillium Book Award for Poetry
Finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards – Transgender Poetry Category
Finalist for the 2019 Publishing Triangle Awards – Trans and Gender-Variant Literature Category
Longlisted for the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award
In her third collection of poetry, Holy Wild, Gwen Benaway explores the complexities of being an Indigenous trans women in expansive lyric poems. She holds up the Indigenous trans body as a site of struggle, liberation, and beauty. A confessional poet, Benaway narrates her sexual and romantic intimacies with partners as well as her work to navigate the daily burden of transphobia and violence. She examines the intersections of Indigenous and trans experience through autobiographical poems and continues to speak to the legacy of abuse, violence, and colonial erasure that defines Canada. Her sparse lines, interwoven with English and Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), illustrate the wonder and power of Indigenous trans womanhood in motion. Holy Wild is not an easy book, as Benaway refuses to give any simple answers, but it is a profoundly vibrant and beautiful work filled with a transcendent grace.
About the author
Gwen Benaway is a trans girl of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She has published three collections of poetry—Ceremonies for the Dead, Passage, and Holy Wild, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. It was also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, and the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature, and was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She is the editor of an anthology of fantasy short stories titled Maiden Mother and Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes. She has been a finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Writers from the Writers' Trust of Canada, and her personal essay, "A Body Like A Home," was the Gold Prize Winner for the National Magazine Awards in Personal Journalism. She is also currently editing a book of creative nonfiction, trans girl in love. day/break is her fourth book of poetry. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, and is a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto in the Women and Gender Studies Institute.
Editorial Reviews
"Benaway conjures trans life in a place that is both prior to and in excess of the violence that mires it. It is the emotional infrastructure for something like freedom. Let Benaway lead you there." —Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World
"As the poet says, 'they want one thing and I am many.' This book is many things, and we are grateful." —Katherena Vermette, author of the award-winning novel The Break