NORTH BATTLEFORD - An award-winning Indigenous Cree author plans to visit North Battleford to give a reading from her highly acclaimed book Bad Cree.
Jessica Johns, a member of the Sucker Creek First Nation in Northern Alberta, will speak at North Battleford Library on Feb. 26, for a 1 p.m. session for students and a 6 p.m. engagement for the general public to enjoy.
Her talk is part of Indigenous Storytelling Month activities in February.
Johns' visit is offered through a partnership with the North Battleford Library, Battlefords Agency Tribal Chiefs (BATC), and Library Services for Saskatchewan Aboriginal Peoples (LSSAP).
Jordon Weenie, a director of Employment and Training with BATC, and also the creator of the Indigenous Book Club at North Battleford Library, is looking forward to Johns' presentation.
This is the third year of the collaborative effort to bring in Indigenous authors to the library for Indigenous Storytelling Month.
"Previously we brought in Michelle Good and Richard Van Camp," Weenie said. "We're trying to really utilize and bring forward our local Indigenous authors."
He said he is thrilled to have Johns come to the Battlefords.
"I'm going to be star-struck because Bad Cree is such a good book," Weenie said. "It's an exciting book. It's a really well-told story that includes a lot of thriller and horror elements. That's somewhat of a rarity with mainstream Indigenous content. That's what makes me excited, because we're now starting to explore all these different themes through different genres, and becoming a bit more mainstream with our storytelling. That's exciting."
He sees the book as a combination horror story and a coming-of-age story at the same time.
"It deals a lot with grief and healing," Weenie added. "It's a story about a woman rediscovering her past and some trauma that had happened, but done in a cleverly spooky way, with Indigenous culture."
He notes the book would interest everyone - Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Weenie said the themes are universal, so anyone could relate to it.
Bad Cree won the MacEwan Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, and was on the 2024 CBC Canada Reads longlist.
The Indigenous Book Club in North Battleford read Bad Cree in September of 2023.
"They loved it," Weenie said. "A lot of the books that we read can be extremely political. But this one was different because of the horror element. It was a completely different story than what we're normally used to reading. We still talk about it. We still talk about the characters. We still talk about the story, because it left that much of an impact. It was a good read. Everyone loved it. Even people who don't love horror really liked the book."
He noted there are many comic elements in the book also that readers will enjoy.
"It's a mixture of humour," Weenie said. "There's humour there that everyone will get, and there's humour there that Indigenous people will understand."
Weenie hopes Johns' visit will inspire others to write their dreams and stories also.
"I hope they feel inspired to go home and write whatever it is that they want to write," he said.
Weenie said he hopes to start a writing club in the future, so budding writers can "write the stories of our beautiful town."
"I know there are writers here that are ready to come out and share their stories," he said.
With Indigenous Storytelling Month running all of February, Weenie hopes it encourages people to listen and to understand, to discover Indigenous stories.
"That's where we live," he said. "We live in our stories. That's how we understand who we are - our identities, our culture, where we come from, and how we relate to one another."
