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

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. […]

21 September

Fall Equinox 2024: The Depth of Time

I wonder sometimes at the dimensions of time. Seasonal like this Equinox and tied to movements of the universe. Linear or cyclical and tied to human history, the decisions and actions of individuals and communities. Or even the way we think of our personal age or lifetime, as in “length of time.But I think there’s […]

19 June

Summer Solstice 2024: Land Acknowledgement

Friends and taxi drivers are always getting lost trying to find my address in Edmonton. In Boyle Street, the streets and avenues seem squished together; there are no straight lines. I used to blame it on the bend in the river. Turns out, it goes much deeper than that. As we approach this National Indigenous […]