2025 JURORS
Camille Georgeson-Usher
is a Coast Salish / Sahtu Dene / Scottish scholar, curator, and writer from Galiano Island, BC and is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Indigenous Art at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Through her research, she is interested in how peoples move together through space, how public art becomes a site for gathering, and intimacies with the everyday. She uses her practice as a long-distance runner as a methodology for embodied theory and alternative forms of sensing place.
Liz Howard
is a poet, editor, and teacher. Her work explores Anishinaabe ways of knowing, cosmology, ecology, and the liberatory potentials of language as art. Her first collection, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos, was shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Trillium Poetry Prize. She has completed creative writing and Indigenous arts residencies at the University of Toronto, the rare Charitable Research Reserve, University of Winnipeg, McGill University, University of Calgary, UBC Okanagan, Douglas College, Sheridan College, and for The Capilano Review. Her work has been performed and published internationally, and has been translated into French, German, Mandarin, and Spanish. Born and raised on Treaty 9 territory in Northern Ontario, she is of mixed settler and Anishinaabe heritage (ancestrally connected to Atikameksheng Anishnawbek First Nation, Robinson-Huron). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.
Conor Kerr
is a national award losing and winning Metis/Ukrainian writer and bird hunter living in amiskwaciwaskahikan. Born in Saskatoon, raised in Buffalo Pound Lake and Drayton Valley, he is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta. His Ukrainian family are settlers on Treaty 4 territory. Conor is the author of the novels Avenue of Champions (2021), Prairie Edge (2024), and the forthcoming Duck Blind (2026). He is also the author of the poetry collections An Explosion of Feathers (2021), Old Gods (2023) and the forthcoming poetic novella Beaver Hills Forever (2025).
Jónína Kirton
an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet, was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Treaty 1, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis. She graduated from the SFU Writer's Studio in 2007 and since that time has published three books with Talonbooks. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, was released in 2022. It merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on her Métis family. She currently lives in New Westminster BC, the stolen Land of many Coast Salish Nations including the S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Qayqayt, šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmaɁɬ təməxʷ (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh), Semiahmoo, Kwantlen, sq̓əc̓iy̓aɁɬ təməxʷ (Katzie), sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsawwassen), Quw’utsun, Stz’uminus and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm.
Cecily Nicholson
is the author of four books and past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (2015) and the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry (2018). She is the first honouree of the Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading award from the Poetry in Canada Society (2023) and 2024/2025 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. Cecily is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Stay Tuned for More Information!
Le Prix voix autochtones
Nous sommes très heureux·ses d’annoncer un changement de leadership dans l’administration des prix pour les catégories francophones. À partir de cette année, c’est Kwahiatonhk!, un organisme à but non lucratif dédié au développement, à la promotion et à la diffusion de la littérature autochtone, avec le soutien de la Chaire de leadership en enseignement sur les littératures autochtones au Québec (Maurice-Lemire) de l’Université Laval, qui assurera l’administration des prix qui seront remis en juin prochain (date à confirmer) lors du festival Kwe!. Nous croyons sincèrement que cette nouvelle collaboration entre les Indigenous Voices Awards, Kwahiatonhk! et Kwe! permettra de mieux soutenir et représenter la communauté littéraire autochtone francophone en consolidant les liens avec le milieu. Les nouvelles modalités et le calendrier des prix seront annoncés lors de l’ouverture du concours en janvier 2025. Demeurez à l’affut en consultant le site web et la page Facebook de Kwahiatonhk!.
2025 Changes in the French Prize
We are thrilled to announce a change of leadership in the administration of the awards for the French-language categories. Beginning this year, Kwahiatonhk! a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, promotion and diffusion of Indigenous literature, with the support of Université Laval’s Chaire de leadership en enseignement sur les littératures autochtones au Québec (Maurice-Lemire), will administer the awards, which will be awarded next June (date to be confirmed) during the Kwe! festival. We sincerely believe that this new collaboration between the Indigenous Voices Awards and Kwahiatonhk! will enable us to better support and represent the French-speaking Indigenous literary community, while strengthening our ties with the milieu. The new conditions and awards schedule will be announced when the competition opens in January 2025. Stay tuned to the Kwahiatonhk! website and Facebook page.