Billy-Ray Belcourt

Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of four books: This Wound is a World, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, A History of My Brief Body, and A Minor Chorus. A History of My Brief Body, essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness, was published in Canada in August 2020 with Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Canada, and in the US with Two Dollar Radio. It 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. It received the Hubert Evans Prize for Non-Fiction. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews called it “elegantly crafted” and “an urgently needed, unyielding book of theoretical and intimate strength.”