Jordan
Abel
Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a author of the poetry collections The Place of Scraps, Un/inhabited, and Injun. Abel has won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. His writing has recently been anthologized in The New Concrete, The Next Wave, and Best Canadian Poetry, among others. Abel recently completed a PhD at Simon Fraser University, and is currently working as an assistant professor at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous literatures and creative writing. Originally from Vancouver, he currently lives in Edmonton.
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Jordan Abel, 2021 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction finalist
Award History
Jury Citation
“NISHGA defies the boundaries and traditions of memoir to achieve something singular and necessary. Instead of striving to process information for the reader, Abel conscripts us into his endeavor by making central what is usually kept behind the curtain: research, found documents, even notes. The result is an active reading experience that conveys the stakes with a power that sticks to the bones. This work fully realizes the complexity of the self and home, and the way atrocity reverberates through generations.”
— 2021 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Jury (Kevin Chong, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Adam Shoalts)
