Billy Ray Belcourt

… is a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, earning his PhD in English at the University of Alberta.

In the First Nations Youth category, Belcourt was awarded a 2019 Indspire Award(opens in new tab), the highest honour bestowed by the Indigenous community on its own leaders.

Billy-Ray’s debut book of poems, This Wound is a World  won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize as well as being a finalist for the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.

His second book, NDN Coping Mechanisms, Notes from the Field, was a national bestseller, was long listed for Canada Reads 2020, and shortlisted for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. It won the  Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.

A History of my Brief Body, essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love and queerness, was a #1 National Bestseller, a Globe & Mail Best Book, and a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, a 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, and two BC and Yukon Book Prizes.

Billy-Ray’s fourth book, A Minor Chorus, was a national bestseller, winning the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and being long listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

His fifth book, Coexistence: Stories, will be published in May 2025.