Katherena Vermette

Métis writer katherena vermette was born in 1977 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her poetry and prose writing have earned numerous awards. vermette attended the University of British Colombia, where she earned an MFA in creative writing. vermette is best known for her poetry. She published her first book, North End Love Songs, in 2013. The book earned vermette the Governer General’s Literary Award for Poetry. The Break, vermette’s debut novel, was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. The novel was shortlisted for that year’s Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and it won the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature in 2017. The Strangers, a sequel to The Break, won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her most recent novel, Real Ones, was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. vermette’s work frequently draws on her own experiences as a Métis woman and the experiences of Canada’s Indigenous people as a whole. The neighborhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where vermette grew up, had a relatively high Indigenous population, and this exposed her to the prejudice that Canada’s marginalized populations face. When vermette was just 14, her older brother was found dead after he had been missing for several months. According to vermette, the media failed to give her brother’s disappearance and death adequate coverage because he was Cree. In addition to her work as a writer, vermette is also involved in activism and has held writing workshops for young people from marginalized backgrounds. She lives with her children in a house on the Red River.