Neal McLeod Writers in Residence Archives

Neal McLeod is Cree (having grown up on the James Smith reserve in Saskatchewan) and Swedish. He studied at the Swedish Art Academy at Umeå. Neal has exhibited his art work throughout Canada including the 2005 exhibition au fil de mes jours (in my lifetime) at Le Musée National des Beaux-arts du Quebec which was remounted at the Museum of Civilization in 2007. Neal’s first book of poetry entitled Songs to Kill a Wîhtikow, was nominated for several Saskatchewan book awards including Book of the Year in 2005.  It was nominated for Book of the Year at the Anskohk Aboriginal Literature Awards, and won the Poetry Book of the Year by unanimous decision of the jurors.

In 2007 Cree Narrative Memory was published, which was nominated for book of the year at the Anskohk Aboriginal Literature Awards. In the fall of 2008, he published his second book of poetry entitled Gabriel’s Beach. He also recently published Indigenous Poetics in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) for which he received the Gabrielle Roy Prize for literary theory and criticism. The following books by Neal McLeod are available: mitêwâcimowina: Indigenous Science Fiction and Speculative Storytelling (Theytus Books), 100 Days of Cree (University of Regina Press), and cîhcêwêsin: new poetry from indigenous saskatchewan (Hagios Press). He is also working on: the life story of Noel Starblanket (Cree leader), a book of poetry called The Book of Ayâs, a retranslation of Plains Cree Texts, and a history of the Piapot Cree First Nation. Neal currently lives in Kinistino, Saskatchewan.