Mamaskatch shortlisted for the 2019 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award

Douglas & McIntyre is pleased to announce that Darrel J. McLeod and his first book, Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age, have been recognized by the West Coast Book Prize Society as a finalist for the 2019 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award. The winners will be announced at the BC Book Prizes Gala on Saturday the 11th of May, 2019, at the Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront in Vancouver.

The BC Book Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia writers and publishers. The seven Prizes are presented annually at the BC Book Prizes Gala in the spring. The Prizes are administered and awarded by members of a non-profit society who represent all facets of the publishing and writing community.

Mamaskatch—a Cree word used as a response to dreams shared—is a series of linked, story-like intervals that weave together Darrel and his family’s wounded lives. Their individual and collective traumas, the tragic flaws that shatter trust and dissolve relationships, the aching attempts to hold on to family and culture, the mysterious presence of birds and ancestral stories, all come together movingly in Darrel’s tender, haunting voice. Mamaskatch won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and was a finalist in the RBC Taylor Prize for Nonfiction.

Darrel J. McLeod is Cree from treaty eight territory in Northern Alberta. Before pursuing writing in his retirement he was a chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nations. He holds degrees in French Literature and Education from UBC.

Darrel is working on a second memoir, Peyakow, following the events in Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age. Darrel lives, writes, sings and plays jazz guitar in Sooke B.C. and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.