“In a few short years, Conor Kerr has already accomplished so much that it is easy to forget that he is still an emerging writer. His five books since 2021 attend to urban Indigenous existence in prairie cities and have either won and been a finalist for almost every award in the country. There is no fixed ceiling on his enormous potential. He an important new voice in Alberta and Canada’s literary scene.”
— 2026 Emerging Artist Jury
– Emerging Artist adjudicators
Conor Kerr is an Edmonton based writer whose books highlight the reality of Métis and Indigenous youth navigating contemporary urban life on the prairies. Since 2021, Conor has published five books, with a sixth novel, Duck Blind, coming out in 2027. His first novel Avenue of Champions (2021), won the 2022 RELIT Award, was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon/Walrus Debut Novel Award, and was longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize. His second novel, Prairie Edge (2024), was shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize and the 2024 Writer’s Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Award and won the Crime Writers of Canada Best Novel award. It was a national bestseller for six months. He has also published the poetry collections, An Explosion of Feathers (2021), Old Gods (2023), which was shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General’s Award for Poetry and named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2023 and the poetic novella Beaver Hills Forever (2025).
Conor Kerr has been a judge for the CBC Short Story Prize, the Amazon/Walrus Debut Novel Award, and the Governor General’s Fiction award.
As a fan of Conor’s work–I teach his writing in my Indigenous Literatures classes at the University of Alberta–I can confidently say that his work is important for both Canadian Literatures and Indigenous Literatures and that my students love it. It’s work that speaks to many of their experiences living in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory, and it speaks to urban Indigenous existence in prairie cities. These are truly remarkable contributions to Prairie Literature.
Dr. Jordan Abel
Poet
Associate Professor Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta
