Ivan Coyote

What is the future of B.C. writing? One answer is Ivan E. Coyote, as original and humorous as they come. While honing talents as an onstage comedian and spoken word recording artist, Coyote also keeps producing subversively comic and poignant stories of consistently high quality, leading to Coyote’s sixth book in ten years, Missed Her (2010), another collection of gender-bending memoirs.

Born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, Ivan E. Coyote is the offspring of a welder and a government worker. “Although technically I fall into the biologically female category,” Coyote once wrote in an earlier story entitled “If I Was a Girl,” “I do lack most of the requirements for membership in the feminine realm.” A founding member of Taste This, a Vancouver performing group, Coyote released three collections of autobiographical writing prior to Missed Her. The Ottawa XPress has observed, “Coyote is to CanLit what k.d. lang is to country music: a beautifully odd fixture.”

“I had a sex change once,” Coyote wrote, “when I was six years old.” That summer Coyote’s mother bought Coyote a bikini for a beginner’s swimming class for ages five to seven. Trouble was, the top easily slid over Coyote’s flat chest. “I was an accomplished tomboy by that time,” Coyote says, “so I was used to hating my clothes.” Arriving at the pool, Coyote didn’t wear the top. When the swimming instructor, a human bellhorn, blew her silver whistle, aggressively dividing them into two camps along sexual lines, short-haired Ivan crossed over.

Website: ivanecoyote.com