Stories as Maps: Reading Where We’ve Been and Writing a Way Forward - November 18, 2025

Novelist Cherie Dimaline discusses the process of using writing to push through the anxiety of hard times. She has written, among others, The Marrow Thieves, a fast-paced, award-winning speculative climate fiction YA novel featuring Native characters, named by TIME Magazine as one of the Best YA Books of All Time. She uses her writing experience to show how, in an era roiled by the climate crisis, book bans, and global turmoil, story can be used as both compass and strategy. Dimaline lives in her Georgian Bay Métis Community and, along with novels, has written and produced for MARVEL, FX, HBO, Disney, and is currently adapting two major projects for AMC.

The talk is sponsored by the English and Media Studies department with support from the Indigenous Education Steering Committee, the Multicultural Center, Natural and Applied Sciences, and the Office of Sustainability.