June 2026

Jonny Appleseed - Joshua Whitehead, 2018

I don’t read enough fiction by Indigenous authors and honestly I don’t think I’m alone in that. When I’ve attended writers events in the past they were overwhelmingly white, straight, and female. So too are book recommendation columns and best seller lists.

To make sure I’m reading diversely I usually have to flip past the big prizes and into the stacks a bit. But not so with Jonny Appleseed. The debut novel by poet Joshua Whitehead has been hailed as an amazing work making the longest for the Giller Prize and the winner of Canada Reads 2021. You should be able to find it in multiple formats at every library and bookstore.

“You’re gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine” is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling debut novel by poet Joshua Whitehead.

Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the “rez”--and his former life--to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The seven days that follow are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny’s life is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages--and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life.

Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of First Nations life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.