A Minor Chorus

An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada's most daring literary talents.

An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness.

What ensues is a series of conversations, connections and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.

Whether he's meeting with an auntie distraught over the imprisonment of her grandson, engaging in rez gossip with his cousin at a pow wow, or lingering in bed with a married man after a hotel room hookup, the narrator makes space for those in his orbit to divulge their private joys and miseries, testing the theory that storytelling can make us feel less lonely.

Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo,A Minor Chorusis a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music. (From Hamish Hamilton)

Billy-RayBelcourtis aRhodes Scholar andPhDstudent fromDriftpileCree Nation in Alberta. His debut collection of poetry,This Wound is a World,is unapologetically Indigenous and queer at the same time.Belcourtissues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder sadness and pain without giving up on the future.

Belcourtwon the 2018 Griffin Poetry PrizeforThis Wound is a World.The collectionalso wonthe2018 Indigenous Voices Awardfor most significant work of poetry in English and wasa finalist for the2018 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. Belcourt's second book,NDN Coping Mechanisms,uses poetry, prose and textual art to explore how Indigenous and queer communities are left out of mainstream media. It wason theCanada Reads2020 longlistand wasshortlisted for the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards.

He is also the author of the memoirA History of My Brief Body,which is abouthow his family was impacted by colonialism and intergenerational trauma and yet still hold joy and love in their hearts and lives. It examineshow he came into his queer identity and how writing became both a place of comfort and solace and a weapon for a young man trying to figure out his place in the world.

• Billy-Ray Belcourt on writing an 'instruction manual for a queer Indigenous future'
• How the Snotty NoseRezKids inspire Billy-RayBelcourt
• Billy-Ray Belcourt's A Minor Chorus looks at modern love and the Indigenous experience
• The CBC Books fall reading list: 30 Canadian books to read now

Interviews with Billy-Ray Belcourt

As It Happens6:34U of A student named first-ever First Nations Rhodes Scholar

Billy-Ray Belcourt is one of three University of Alberta students to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, and he's the first First Nations student to be awarded the prize.

The Sunday Magazine13:46Writer Billy-Ray Belcourt on why joy and love are acts of rebellion for Indigenous people

Billy Ray Belcourt's memoir A History of My Brief Body just won a 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prize. This past spring, he spoke with Piya Chattopadhyay about how he has blazed a trail of firsts as an Indigenous writer and academic in Canada and beyond. He was the first Indigenous Rhodes Scholar from Canada and in 2018, became the youngest-ever winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetry. We revisit his conversation with Piya Chattopadhyay about how joy and love can be liberatory, rebellious practices for Indigenous people.

Other books by Billy-Ray Belcourt