Courageous Conversations
Rehearsals for Living
January 19, 2023
Rehearsals for Living, named one of the best Canadian nonfiction books of 2022 by CBC, is a revolutionary and inspiring collaboration and call to action between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists about the world we are living in now
When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here, now collected together in Rehearsals for Living. This first Courageous Conversation of 2023 will open with a Blessing by Elder Colleen Sitting Eagle. Maynard and Simpson will give brief readings from Rehearsals for Living, and be in discussion with Malinda Smith, Vice Provost and Associate Vice President Research (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) and Elder Sitting Eagle about this genre-defying work.
Date: January 19, 2023
About the speakers
Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017). The book is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. In 2018 the book was published in French with Mémoire d’encrier, titled NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada. Translated by Catherine Ego, it won the 2019 Prix de libraires in the category of “essais.”
Her most recent published monograph is Rehearsals for Living, co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, published with Knopf (Canada), Haymarket: Abolitionist Paper Series (US/UK), and forthcoming with Memoire D’encrier (French translation). The book is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and CBC National Bestseller.
Maynard is the winner of the “2018 author of the year” award by Montreal’s Black History Month and was nominated for Writer’s Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Scholar & Feminist Journal. Her writing on borders, policing, abolition and Black feminism is taught widely in universities across Canada and the United States.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.
Leanne is the author of eight books, including A Short History of the Blockade and the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies which was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. This Accident of Being Lost was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award. Her new project, a collaboration with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living is a National Best Seller and was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Leanne is also a musician. Her latest release Theory of Ice was named to the Polaris Prize short list, and she is the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award.
Oki Niistowoak Siipiyanatohkomiaaki.
Kitohkanaiksimmatsimmohpowawa.
Colleen Sitting Eagle has worked with young people all their working years in many different but similar aspects. From being a Youth Camp Coordinator, Youth Prevention Juvenile Counsellor, Crime prevention with Gleichen R.C.M.P. and Blackfoot Tribal Police, Researcher for Siksika Culture and Heritage to being a Language Teacher/Liaison for Siksika Schools. She has been gifted with two beautiful children with loosing her son in 2022. She is Kaasii to six grandchildren ranging from 7-21 years old.
