Beaver Hills Forever

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An irreverent and playful novella of Metis voices that reflects the complexities of contemporary prairie life

Conor Kerr’s 2024 novel Prairie Edge was a finalist for both the Giller Prize and the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust of Canada Fiction Prize. His latest book, Beaver Hills Forever, takes a riotous, uncompromising look at the intertwined lives of four characters, each an abstract expression of the few paths available to Metis people on the Prairies. In alternating poetic verses, Buddy, Baby Momma, Fancy University Boy, and Aunty Prof share their inner dreams, hardships, delusions of grandeur, and existential plights. While the messy day-to-day is created by their own doing, the lives of these four individuals are doubly compromised by Canada’s colonial education system and resource extraction industries.

A beguiling and genre-bending work, Beaver Hills Forever offers a moving, necessary exploration of education, labour, and the dynamic, ever-changing bonds that bring us back to each other. Here is a diverse, funny, pitch-perfect chorus of voices that rings loud and true over the wide prairie landscape.

AUTHOR

Conor Kerr

Conor Kerr is an educator, writer and harvester. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, part of the Edmonton Indigenous community and is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne & Fort Des Prairies Métis communities and the Papaschase Cree Nation. He works as the Manager of Indigenous Relations & Supports at NorQuest College and is a sessional instructor in the pimâcihisowin program at MacEwan University. In 2019, he received The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry award. His poetry has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and has appeared in literary magazines across Canada. He is honoured to be able to live and work on the land that his family has called home for generations.

Reviews

Not every Metis kid Needs a sad story says a character in Conor Kerrs propulsive and deeply entertaining new work where each boneclean sentence holds a galaxy of stories in its marrow Kerr is part of a vital contemporary movement that is reimagining what our literatures can be and what they can do Beaver Hills Forever is a reminder that laughter and passion are as much a part of the narrative as struggle In these pages youll find voices that demand to be heard felt and remembered Carleigh Baker author of Last Woman and Bad Endings

Beaver Hills Forever is full of raunch and riot Conor Kerrs ability to gravitate around the embodied truths of institutional whiteness class settler colonization and the Indigenous Metis experience in the moraine of amiskwaciy is rebellious in its desire to not pathologize or rationalize the violent backdrops of its animate setting With his skilled hand Kerr makes sure there is room for all in the digital economy of the Future Joshua Whitehead author of Jonny Appleseed

Aho fancy reader Welcome to Conor Kerrs Beaver Hills Forever Well laugh well cry Well smoke well die Etc etc Beaver Hills Forever is funny heartfelt poetic badass Its Bald Boy Goodbye Sad Story Indigenous Canon Etc etc Magpie cackles Metis literatures Aunty Prof wonders realizes smudges feelgood energy Fuck all the ongoing bullshit internal politics and academic distortion and just hear the truth etc etc Jordan Abel author of Empty Spaces and NISHGA

Billed A Metis Poetic Novella Beaver Hills Forever Conor Kerrs fifth book alternates between four Metis protagonists living in a city like Edmonton each pursuing brighter futures amid capitalist and colonialist barriers Beaver Hills Forever is a departure in both form and tone Hope and humour glint here even as the cast struggle in their respective searches for fulfillment Quill amp Quire

Much like his prose Conor Kerrs Beaver Hills Forever imbues the language of everyday Indigenous life with a poetic charm that is just incredibly readable and relatable This book is truly multitudinous a love story an antilove story a critique of neoliberalism an ode to the Prairies and above all proof that even our smallest desires are worthy of sustained poetic consideration BillyRay Belcourt author of Coexistence