Alicia Elliott

My guest in this episode is Alicia Elliott. Alicia is a Mohawk writer living in Brantford, Ontario, whose essays have been nominated for multiple National Magazine Awards. She is also a recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Alicia’s first book, the essay collection A Mind Spread Out On The Ground, was a national bestseller, and was nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. It also won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award.

 

The New York Times Book Review called that collection “raw” and “unflinching”, the Globe and Mail called it “a tour de force” and Booklist called it "required reading.”

 

Alicia and talk about her upcoming first novel, about the slightly unreal-sounding process of writing and publishing her first book, and about how she has handled the occasionally complicated reality of being a high-profile Indigenous writer. (We also talk very briefly about the Vanderpump Rules reunion.)

 

Alicia Elliott's author page at Penguin Random House Canada.

Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.

Contact Nathan Whitlock at nathanwhitlock.ca/contact