PRAISE FOR KATHERENA VERMETTE AND RIVER WOMAN: "Intensely political and personal . A beautiful and resonant book." -- Prairie Fire "A book that is at once deeply personal and politically charged." -- Quill & Quire "These spare, imagistic poems live up to the words of the Vietnamese spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted in an epigraph: ''If our hearts are big, we can be like the river.''" -- Toronto Star "Vermette''s new collection is a strong follow-up to her Governor General''s Award-winning debut, 2012''s North End Love Songs." -- Winnipeg Free Press "''A snake carved / into prairie grass,'' river woman is a collection that will stay with you, question you, live in you. One cannot simply tread the surface of its open invitation. There are many layers here below the poetic surface, and Vermette is singer-guide to the true depths of this river.
It''s a work to be read, shared, and read again." -- Liz Howard, author of the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning collection Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent "In river woman, Vermette take us inside river, as a concept, a reality, and another world, and gently reveals the power, the resistance, and the sheer love of water, of life, and of all things Indigenous. Vermette''s poetics are sparse, haunting, and steeped in river story, and her poems come to me as river songs. There is a presencing rhythm to this work, revealing that which is and always has been, flowing right in front of us." -- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of This Accident of Being Lost "In river woman, Katherena Vermette marshals the maternal energy of the river to spin the lyric poem into something that is awash with vitality. This ethic of care, which each section bears and ricochets about, has at its core a project of repair or nourishment, not just of the natural, but of those of us entangled with it. This us, Vermette deftly shows, is not an empty thing, but is instead teeming with Indigenous life -- ''we are the earth you are hurting.'' We are the river and, in this, we are without end, regardless of what history swells in us.
Pick up this book and listen for the musicality of our beautiful rebellion!" -- Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World, winner of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize "river woman again displays Vermette''s extraordinary gift for narrative. ''Ziibiwan (like a river),'' these are poems that gather pieces of personal experience and Indigenous history and in their sweep are bigger than the spare language we see on the page." -- Armand Garnet Ruffo, author of The Thunderbird Poems PRAISE FOR KATHERENA VERMETTE AND THE BREAK: WINNER, AMAZON.CA FIRST NOVEL AWARD WINNER, MARGARET LAURENCE AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER, CAROL SHIELDS WINNIPEG BOOK AWARD WINNER, MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER, BURT AWARD FOR FIRST NATIONS, INUIT, AND MÉTIS YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE INDIGO HEATHER''S PICK CBC CANADA READS FINALIST NATIONAL BESTSELLER 2016 ROGERS WRITERS'' TRUST FICTION PRIZE FINALIST 2016 GOVERNOR GENERAL''S LITERARY AWARD FINALIST QUILL & QUIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR KOBO BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 49TH SHELF BOOKS OF THE YEAR GLOBE AND MAIL BEST 100 BOOKS OF THE YEAR NATIONAL POST 99 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR WALRUS MAGAZINE THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR CBC BEST CANADIAN DEBUT NOVELS OF THE YEAR "In language that''s quick and bruising, sharp-edged and relentless, Vermette limns one family and one community to show us something bigger." -- Library Journal, starred review "Vermette portrays a wide array of strong, complicated, absolutely believable women, and through them and their hardships offers readers sharp views of race and class issues. This is slice-of-life storytelling at its finest." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "This intimate and emotional look at their lives succeeds both as a novel and as a work of social justice." -- Booklist, starred review "Vermette''s approach to her complex and devastating subject matter is boundless in its scope, intelligence, and beauty.
" -- Shelf Awareness, starred review "Katherena Vermette''s debut novel, The Break, takes a tough, close-up look at an extended family in Winnipeg, tackling along the way a side of female life that''s often hard to acknowledge: the violence of girls and women sometimes display towards other girls and women, and the power struggles among them. In The Break, the characters may be Métis, but the motivations and emotions are surely universal. This is an accomplished writer who will go far." -- Margaret Atwood "Katherena Vermette is a tremendously gifted writer, a dazzling talent." -- Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing "Katherena Vermette rendered the women of the North End gorgeous in her poetry, North End Love Songs. In The Break, she renders them sweet, beautiful battlers who love under the most horrific of circumstances." -- Lee Maracle, author of Celia''s Song "Vermette is a staggering talent." -- Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach "In Vermette''s poetic prose, The Break offers a stark portrayal of the adversity that plagues First Nations women in this country -- and the strength that helps them survive.
" -- Toronto Star "It''s unsurprising that a novel by a poet would be beautifully written . The Break is an astonishing act of empathy, and its conclusion is heartbreaking." -- Globe and Mail "With adeptness and sensitivity, Vermette puts a human face to issues that are too-often misunderstood, and in so doing, she has written a book that is both one of the most important of the year and one of the best. Though Katherena Vermette is not an emerging writer -- she has written seven children''s books and won a Governor General''s award for her poetry collection North End Love Songs -- for many, this novel will be their first encounter. And it will be a revelation. Vermette is a fully matured literary talent confronting some of our society''s fundamental problems through understated prose that exudes wisdom and emotion. Every page hides beauty amid suffering; love winning out over violence and hate. Stella, at one point in the novel, thinks about ''[a] story that didn''t happen to her but that she keeps and remembers.
'' The Break is like that; it is a story that will stick with you a long time." -- National Post "The Break doesn''t read like an impressive first novel; it reads like a masterstroke from someone who knows what they''re doing . Vermette is skilled at writing with a language that is conversational and comfortable and with a poetic ease that makes the hard things easier to swallow. The result is a book that is at times emotionally demanding, funny, suspenseful, and always engaging." -- The Winnipeg Review "Stunning . [Vermette] chooses her words with a poet''s precision." -- Literary Review of Canada "Equal parts page-turner and stunning literary accomplishment." -- Open Book PRAISE FOR KATHERENA VERMETTE AND NORTH END LOVE SONGS: WINNER, GOVERNOR GENERAL''S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY SELECTION, "On the Same Page" (Manitoba''s provincial book club) "In spare, minimalist language, North End Love Songs attends to the demands of Indigenous and European poetics, braiding an elegant journey that takes us from Winnipeg''s North End out into the world.
" -- Governor General''s Literary Award jury citation "In North End Love Songs, Katherena Vermette uses spare language and brief, telling sketches to illuminate the aviary of a prairie neighbourhood. Vermette''s love songs are unconventional and imminent, an examination and a celebration of family and community in all weathers, the beautiful as well as the less clement conditions. This collection is a very moving tribute, to the girls and the women, the boys and the men, and the loving trouble that has forever transpired between us." -- Joanne Arnott "The love that sits at the core of Katherena Vermette''s North End Love Songs is not simple or serene, but pugnacious and ferocious, something to be alternately fled from as well as embraced. Vermette''s poetry explores a landscape that she at once rejects . but elsewhere speaks of with a great sense of love and longing . These North End Love Songs are loud and heightened, but also possess a surprising vulnerability. The collection''s subjects are often wounded and sometimes disappear, as both the inner and outer landscapes that Vermette explores have the tendency to turn hostile.
North End Love Songs embraces the difficulties, the stumbling and the groping, and all the chilly, ugly elements than can nonetheless combine into a sense of place and home." -- The Walrus "From a mixed-blood Métis woman with Mennonite roots, Kate weaves a story that winds its way through the north end (Nor-tend) of Winnipeg. It''s a story of death, birth, survival, beauty, and ugliness; through it all there are glimmers of hope, strength, and a will to survive whatever this city throws at you." -- Duncan Mercredi "North End Love Songs . combines elegiac and fiercely ecstatic melodies to sing of a complicated love for a city, a river, and a neighbourhood. It is deep rooted in its location, yet will reach out to readers everywhere with its harsh and beautiful tunings of growing up female in Winnipeg''s North End." -- Prairie Fire.