Audrey Whitson

Audrey Whitson’s novel, The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning, was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize in 2020. Whitson’s collection of coming-of-age stories, The Glorious Mysteries, was longlisted for the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her first book, Teaching Places, a memoir about how the land teaches, was shortlisted for three awards in 2004, including the Grant MacEwan Authors Award. Her poetry, stories, and essays have been published in many magazines and anthologies. Audrey was the MacEwan Writer in Residence in 2023. She is currently working on a new collection of short stories, a collection of personal essays, and a play about sexual exploitation.

Audrey lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan (also known as Edmonton), in Treaty 6 territory.

From the Blog

Audrey's musings

19 June

Summer Solstice 2025: What We Know

“To be native to a place, we must learn to speaks its language.” Robin Wall Kimmerer The land where I now live was known as River Lot 20 in fur trade and settlement times. But of the layers (the people and their stories) “before contact,” I know almost nothing. To show these layers on a […]

19 March

Spring Equinox 2025: Imagine Equal

The word equinox comes from the Latin for “equal night.” It’s the point when the sun crosses the earth’s equator. In the northern hemisphere at this time of year, we celebrate the vernal or spring equinox; while the southern half of the world celebrates the autumnal equinox. On equinox, night and day are roughly equal […]

20 December

Winter Solstice 2024: The Sacred Tree

Trees have always been part of our family. My father was a sawyer as well as a farmer. My mother grew up on the “Dust Bowl” prairies of the 1930s and for all her adult life planted and nurtured trees wherever she could. We still have a “quarter section” of boreal forest in the family. […]