Dr. Norma Dunning will open the first full day of presentations on September 30th at the Inuit Art Society’s 2022 annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
A Padlei Inuk writer, professor, and grandmother, Dr. Dunning’s work primarily focuses on Inuit who reside outside of the tundra.
An award-winning author, her short story collection Tainna (the unseen ones) received the Governor General’s Prize for fiction in 2021. Her first collection of short stories, Annie Muktuk and Other Stories, received the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Eskimo Pie: a poetics of Inuit Identity, was her first collection of poetry and a provincial best seller. Her most recent poetry collection, Akia (the other side), examines the explorers and anthropologists of long ago whose renderings of Inuit were little more than savages.
Dr. Dunning’s first work of nonfiction, Kinauvit? (what’s your name?), explains the Canadian Eskimo disc identification system. It will be released in October of 2022.
For her presentation, Inuit: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, she will read passages from each of her books that present Inuit life in different time periods in Canadian society.
After her presentation, Dr. Dunning will sign books for anyone who brings copies with them. Books will not be available for purchase at the meeting, so be sure to purchase copies in advance and bring them along.
See the full program for the IAS 2022 Annual Meeting.
Learn more about Dr. Dunning and her work on the Inuit Literatures website and at Inuk author Norma Dunning explores life, death and identity erasure with story collection Tainna on the CBC website.