In this final installation of the Overhead Series, Lucy Hemphill once again transports the reader with intimate revelations on identity by exploring both her personal and ancestral relationship to the forest and the quiet sentinels that root together everything. Hemphill’s prose is extraordinary in its combination of self awareness yet unselfconscious honesty and skillful restraint, creating a sense of connection under the tangle of foliage and limb that ever-reach skyward. Masterfully illustrated by artist Michael Joyal, his evocative dendrological drawings contribute to the overall sensory and transcendent experience.

Lucy Hemphill is a Kwakwaka’wakw mother from the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nation. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in First Nations and Indigenous Studies in 2019. Lucy strives to reconnect to ancestral relational ways of being and is currently working to develop language revitalization and healing programs in her community. Lucy is the author of the Overhead Series, which includes three poetry titles: Clouds, Stars, and Trees.

Lucy Hemphill's profile page

MICHAEL JOYAL is a Canadian watercolour artist whose work focus on reinterpreting characters from mythology and fairy tales through a modern lens. The paintings explore roles of feminine power through feelings of strength, anger, melancholy and joy. He has exhibited in Canada and the United States. His work is held in permanent collection at the International Cryptozoology Museum and the Legislative Library of Manitoba.

Michael Joyal's profile page