
Love After the End: Joshua Whitehead & Friends
3pm | Roundhouse Performance Centre | Ticketed
ASL Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction is an exciting and ground-breaking fiction collection showcasing a number of emerging and established Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer writers, edited and compiled by acclaimed writer Joshua Whitehead. Whitehead joins us with fellow visionary authors Nathan Adler, jaye simpson, and Nazbah Tom for an afternoon that demonstrates how Queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives.
Cinq-à-Sept Reception
5 pm – 7pm | Roundhouse Exhibition Hall | Free
Join us in the Roundhouse Exhibition Hall for a book signing, DJ spins and a special reception courtesy of Talking Stick Festival.
Virago Nation Burlesque
7pm | Roundhouse Performance Centre | Ticketed
The day concludes with a powerful performance by the badass Indigiqueer burlesque babes of Virago Nation! Please note: this performance is 18+.
Joshua Whitehead (he/him) is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary where he is housed in the departments of English and International Indigenous Studies (Treaty 7).
He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017) which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. He is also the author of Jonny Appleseed(Arsenal Pulp Press 2018) which was long listed for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and Canada Reads 2021.
Virago Nation reminds viewers to embrace their EXTRA and that heteronormativity is inherently colonial and that queerness is a gift to be celebrated! Their message is consistent, loud & clear—colonial and patriarchal ideologies have no place here. Using storytelling, comedy, pop culture, and striptease, Virago Nation continues to show that Indigenous sexuality is multi-faceted, dynamic, powerful and an experience that is deeply personal.
Nazbah Tom: Nazbah uses conversation, breath work, gestural work, bodywork, and somatic skills to guide individuals and groups through a process of embodied transformation.
jaye simpson is a Two-Spirit Oji-Cree person of the Buffalo Clan with roots in Sapotaweyak and Skownan Cree Nation who often writes about being queer in the child welfare system, as well as being queer and Indigenous. simpson’s work has been performed at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word (2017) in Peterborough, and in Guelph with the Vancouver Slam Poetry 2018 Team. simpson has recently been named the Vancouver Champion for the Women of the World Poetry Slam and their work has been featured in Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Mag, GUTS Magazine and Room. simpson resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlilwəta’Ɂɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples, currently and colonially known as Vancouver, BC.
Nathan Adler is the author of Wrist and Ghost Lake (Kegedonce Press), and co-editor of Bawaajigan ~ Stories of Power(Exile Editions), he has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, is a first-place winner of the Aboriginal Writing Challenge, and a recipient of a Hnatyshyn Reveal award for Literature. He is Jewish and Anishinaabe, and a member of Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation.