Moose Jaw-Since its founding in 1996, the Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw has earned a reputation as one of the most respected and popular writing festivals in Canada. Offering sixty events over a four-day period, the festival showcases both new and established authors in the genres of fiction, non-fiction, mystery, romance, drama, film, spoken word and poetry.

The Festival recently announced that Lisa Bird-Wilson will be reading from her debut collection of short stories, Just Pretending (Coteau Books, 2013), at the 2015 Saskatchewan Festival of Words. She is also the author of a non-fiction book, An Institute of Our Own: A History of the Gabriel Dumont Institute (Gabriel Dumont Publishing, 2012). Her work has appeared in numerous Canadian literary magazines, has twice been nominated for the Journey Prize, and included in Best Canadian Essays (2011).

Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Saskatchewan Métis writer whose work has appeared in a number of literary magazines and anthologies. Just Pretending was a finalist for the national Danuta Gleed Literary Award and won several Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year, Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award, SaskPower Fiction Award and the Aboriginal Peoples’ Publishing Award.

It was also announced that James Daschuk, author of Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (University of Regina Press, 2013), will be a featured performer at this year’s Saskatchewan Festival of Words. Clearing the Plains was named a “Book of the Year” by the Globe & Mail, Quill & Quire and the Writers’ Trust.

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