Audrey Whitson

Audrey Whitson’s novel, The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning, was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize in 2020. Whitson’s collection of coming-of-age stories, The Glorious Mysteries, was longlisted for the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her first book, Teaching Places, a memoir about how the land teaches, was shortlisted for three awards in 2004, including the Grant MacEwan Authors Award. Her poetry, stories, and essays have been published in many magazines and anthologies. Audrey was the MacEwan Writer in Residence in 2023. She is currently working on a new collection of short stories, a collection of personal essays, and a play about sexual exploitation.

Audrey lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan (also known as Edmonton), in Treaty 6 territory.

From the Blog

Audrey's musings

21 September

Fall Equinox 2025: Homing

Hundreds of millions of birds are on the move, have been migrating through Alberta for several weeks now. First the landbirds (warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, vireos, hummingbirds and others) who left northern Alberta in early August. Next the shorebirds, the raptors, and the waterbirds. The last to go (as late as November) will be the waterfowl: […]

19 June

Summer Solstice 2025: What We Know

“To be native to a place, we must learn to speaks its language.” Robin Wall Kimmerer The land where I now live was known as River Lot 20 in fur trade and settlement times. But of the layers (the people and their stories) “before contact,” I know almost nothing. To show these layers on a […]

19 March

Spring Equinox 2025: Imagine Equal

The word equinox comes from the Latin for “equal night.” It’s the point when the sun crosses the earth’s equator. In the northern hemisphere at this time of year, we celebrate the vernal or spring equinox; while the southern half of the world celebrates the autumnal equinox. On equinox, night and day are roughly equal […]