We are so thrilled to share that Jesse Thistle’s FROM THE ASHES was selected by Maclean’s Magazine as one of the 50 most iconic films, books albums and TV shows in the Canadian canon!
FROM THE ASHES is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up.
Jesse Thistle is Métis-Cree, from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and an assistant professor in Humanities at York University in Toronto. FROM THE ASHES was the top-selling Canadian book in 2020, the winner of the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction, Indigenous Voices Award, and High Plains Book Award, and also a finalist for CBC Canada Reads. Jesse won a Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2016, and is a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Vanier Scholar.
“This is one of those books that breaks your heart and then carefully, cautiously puts it back together again. I remember its breathlessness—or maybe that’s just how fast I was reading. My heart hung on this memoir of a young Métis-Cree man in the throes of childhood hardship, homelessness and addiction, who somehow manages to pick himself up and get picked up by those who love and help him. It personifies the history of colonization through one man’s journey, promising the healing power of a happy ending.”
—Macleans Magazine, katherena vermette
Jesse Thistle is represented by Samantha Haywood.
Congratulations, Jesse!