Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet, was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Treaty 1, the Traditional Lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis. One of the co-founders of Indigenous Brilliance, she currently lives in New Westminster BC, the stolen land of the Hul’qumi’num speaking peoples. Jónína graduated from the SFU Writer's Studio in 2007 and since that time has published three books of poetry. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
Short-listed 2018 BC Book Prize: Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize