Conor Kerr's Avenue of Champions on Giller Prize Longlist

The 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist has been announced and Conor Kerr has been recognized for his novel, Avenue of Champions. This comes on the heels of the announcement that the book won the 2022 ReLit Award and was shortlisted for the 46th Annual First Novel Award. 

Avenue of Champions is a novel about Daniel, a young Métis man who is searching for a way to exist in a world of violence and systemic racism. Hitting obstacles at every turn—whether in the child welfare system, at university, or in government jobs, he observes and learns from the lived realities of his family members, friends and teachers. The narrative unfolds through stories told from the perspectives of various people in Daniel’s life, including his Granny (a moonshiner turned pot grower), his hardened yet big-hearted brother; and his best friend from foster care. Through these characters, the story moves back and forth in time, revealing an important history of the land that the city of Edmonton now sits on.

Conor Kerr (he/him) Conor Kerr is a Métis Ukrainian writer. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is a descendant of the Lac Ste. Anne Métis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty Four and Six territories in Saskatchewan. In 2020 he received The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and in 2021 was awarded The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Best Canadian Stories 2020 and published in literary magazines across Canada. He is the author of the poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon First Novel Award and won a 2022 ReLit Award. His poetry collection Old Gods is forthcoming with Nightwood Editions in 2023.