Jessica Johns’s debut novel, Bad Cree, is a gripping story about intergenerational trauma that follows a Cree millennial who has haunting dreams about her dead sister and Kokum. It’s a horror novel that grapples with the effects of grief, and is an ode to female relations and the strength found in kinship.

For the third event of this lineup, join Jessica Johns in conversation with award-winning writer Selina Boan.

Jessica Johns (she/her) is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Her debut novel, Bad Cree, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, won the MacEwan Book of the Year award, won the American Library Association's 2024 Youth Media Award, and was a finalist for CBC Canada Reads 2024.  Her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction has been published in Cosmonauts Avenue, Glass Buffalo, CV2, SAD Magazine, Red Rising Magazine, Poetry is Dead, Bad Nudes, Grain, The Fiddlehead, Canadian Art, C Magazine, Brick, Reissue, Maisonneuve, The Globe and Mail, Best Canadian Essays 2019, among others.

Selina Boan (she/her) is a white settler–nehiyaw poet living on the traditional, unceded territories of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ílwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples. Her work has been published widely, including in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She has received several honours for her work, including Room’s 2018 Emerging Writer Award and the 2017 National Magazine Award for Poetry. She is currently a poetry editor for Rahila’s Ghost Press and a member of the Growing Room Collective.

The bookseller for this event is Iron Dog Books, and you can order a copy of Bad Cree here.

BC Libraries Present is a virtual author series that brings exciting conversations to library users in every corner of British Columbia.

This series is a project of BC’s public library federations, coordinated by Public Library InterLink, with the generous financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

Jessica Johns: Bad Cree