Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden was born the ninth of eleven children to Blanche Gosling and Raymond Boyden, a highly decorated medical officer from World War II. Boyden grew up outside Toronto, Canada, and went to Brebeuf College School, a Catholic all-boys academy in Toronto. He attended York University in Ontario, where he studied Humanities, and later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of New Orleans in Louisiana in 1995. Boyden worked as a professor in the Aboriginal Student Program at Northern College in Ontario and taught at the University of New Orleans and the University of British Columbia. In 2006, he published his first novel, Three Day Road, to popular and critical acclaim and wrote his second novel, Through the Black Spruce, in 2008. Most of Boyden’s writing focuses on First Nations culture and people, and Boyden himself claims to be of Métis heritage, meaning he is of mixed Indigenous and Euro-American ancestry. Boyden received the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award in 2005 for Three Day Road, an honor that is bestowed upon Indigenous Canadian writers and includes a $5,000 prize. He became embroiled in controversy in 2016 when a national news outlet claimed no Indigenous ancestors could be found in Boyden’s family tree, which is mostly Scottish and Irish. Several Indigenous writers and activists spoke out against Boyden and his seemingly false claims to First Nations heritage, especially considering his acceptance of the McNally Robinson Award, an honor reserved for Indigenous writers only. Boyden maintains his Métis heritage and claims to be of mixed Ojibway and Nipmuc blood. He keeps homes in both Louisiana and Ontario, where he lives with his wife and fellow writer, Amanda Boyden.