Amanda Peters on the art of thought-provoking storytelling
I think I've been around these stories for so long and sat in these circles for so long, that it's just something that I maybe unconsciously feel a responsibility to talk about.
But I do it in a subtle way so that people are enjoying the story—but they're also thinking about these things now.
Host Nathan Maharaj spoke with Amanda Peters, author of the 2023 novel The Berry Pickers, a book about a 4-year-old girl who goes missing while her family is visiting Maine for the summer to pick blueberries. It’s a book that won both the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Crime Writers of Canada’s first novel award, among many other accolades. Her new book is a collection of short stories called Waiting for the Long Night Moon.
Waiting for the Long Night Moon: Stories
The stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon explore the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place—from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water. Amanda Peters portrays the dignity of traditional Indigenous life, the humiliations of systemic racism, and the resilient power to endure by melding traditional storytelling with her signature style of evocative, spare prose.
View eBook View AudiobookSubscribe to Kobo in Conversation wherever you listen.
