Indigenous author Lee Maracle delivers the 2020 Margaret Laurence Lecture

Описание: Acclaimed Stó:lō storyteller Lee Maracle explains her thoughts on decolonizing literature and outlines issues with books schools choose to iconize. Maracle looks retrospectively at her own writing life, contemporaries, and community, and asks why Indigenous women continuously come last in Canada.

◥ Lee Maracle is a member of Stó:lō nation and grew up in North Vancouver, BC. Among Canada’s most prolific writers, Maracle has published novels, poetry, short story collections, and collaborative anthologies. Her writing is a fusion of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, myth, and memoir that revives traditional Indigenous stories to frame her modern tales. Maracle’s first book, the autobiographical novel Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel is the story of an Indigenous woman growing up within an oppressed minority during the 1960s and 1970s, and her struggle toward political consciousness. Maracle is a teacher and mentor for Aboriginal Students at University of Toronto and a Traditional Teacher at First Nations House.

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About the Margaret Laurence Lecture
writerstrust.com/MargaretLaurenceLecture

Each year since 1987, Writers' Trust has commissioned a senior Canadian author to deliver a lecture on the topic of "A Writer's Life." It was Pierre Berton, a co-founder of the Writers' Trust, who originally proposed the creation of the Margaret Laurence Lecture series.

The purpose then, as it remains now, is to have Canadian writers look retrospectively at their own lives and share insights into their work, that of their contemporaries, and their communities. Views and perspectives belong to the lecturer and can be thoughtful, reflective, challenging, and even provocative. The lectures aim to give rise to better conversations about the past, present, and future of writing in Canada.