Press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto; August 12, 2021)

HarperCollinsCanada is very pleased to have acquired world rights, all languages, to three works of non-fiction by acclaimed award-winning author, journalist, and sought-after speaker Tanya Talaga, whose book Seven Fallen Feathers won the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and a First Nation Communities Read book award (Young Adult/Adult category). 

Talaga’s first book with HarperCollinsCanada is set to publish in 2023. It will focus on residential schools and the essential reckoning, exploring why the discovery of unmarked graves on residential school grounds has finally resonated with Canadians as well as rest of the world.  

Talaga said of the acquisition, “The Indian Residential School was a pillar of Canada’s genocidal policies against Indigenous Peoples. Every Indigenous family is touched by the trauma of the ‘schools.’ Those places did the opposite of nurturing and educating. They tormented and tortured. Canada hoped the world wouldn’t notice—but it has. All of our communities, our families, know the stories of the lost, those stolen from us. It is time the children are honoured and their voices heard. I’m beyond grateful to HarperCollins for understanding this is the book we need now.”

Senior Vice President and Executive Publisher Iris Tupholme said, “Tanya is a pre-eminent Indigenous voice writing in Canada today. A household name, she can elevate these much-needed conversations to a national audience at the very moment we are facing a tipping point when it comes to Indigenous issues and history in Canada. We see these books as ones of vital importance to forging new relationships in this fractured nation.” 

Tanya Talaga is represented by Westwood Creative Artists. The book deal was brokered by Michael Levine, Chairman of Westwood Creative Artists.

Tanya Talaga is the acclaimed author of the award-winning book Seven Fallen Feathers as well as All Our Relations, her 2018 Massey Lectures. Currently a columnist at The Globe and Mail, Tanya was a journalist at the Toronto Star for more than twenty years and has been nominated five times for the Michener Award in public service journalism. She was named 2017−2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy and holds three honorary doctorates. Tanya shares her expertise on the boards of the Writers’ Trust of Canada and The Narwhal, and is President and CEO of Makwa Creative, a production company focused on Indigenous storytelling. Makwa’s Mashkawi-manidoo bimaadiziwin—Spirit to Soar Fund supports Indigenous youth programming in Thunder Bay, and its first documentary film, Spirit to Soar, will air this fall on CBC. Tanya is Ojibwe, with roots in Fort William First Nation in Ontario, Canada.