Délani Valin is a Métis writer and researcher. Her poetry collection Shapeshifters (Nightwood Editions, 2022) was nominated for the Indigenous Voices Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her work has received The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize and subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Award, and has appeared in Arc Poetry, PRISM International, Adbusters, Room, and in the anthologies Those Who Make Us and Bawaajigan. She is an alumna of the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has participated in Audible’s Indigenous Writer’s Circle. For her current project—a novel in which five Métis characters travel on foot from B.C. to Batoche, Saskatchewan—Délani walked 800 kilometres across Spain to understand how her characters would deal with blisters and form friendships on the road. She holds an MA in Professional Communications from Royal Roads University, where she wrote her thesis on the relationship between Métis counselling clients and non-Indigenous counsellors. She is interested in exploring Métis expressions and ideas of kinship and belonging, and how they clash with, complicate, and extend the Western philosophy she grew up reading. Délani also has BA in Creative Writing from Vancouver Island University. She serves on the editorial board of The Malahat Review.
Délani Valin is represented by Rachel Letofsky. Welcome, Délani!