What advice would you give your ten-year-old self about being alive in 2024?

The internet will never be as good as it was in 2006. Don’t put much faith in it. The world sucks, but it always has; now it’s just more broadcast. Wo

rk is overrated, but you’ve known that since you were ten. Put more time into your relationships and less time into doing whatever the hell you want.

In an alternate version of the world—one in which you are not a writer—who would be you be?

Honestly, the most realistic answer is an operator at a gas plant in northern Alberta or working the forklift at a warehouse in Edmonton. I always thought that’s where I was destined to be. I’m still not fully convinced that I won’t end up there someday. Nothing wrong with that, that’s what a lot of my friends and family do for a living.

So yeah, just blue collaring it up, having some beers at the pub on the weekend, going bird/moose hunting in the fall, playing cards, actually it’s not that much different than what I already do outside of the work component.

Who’s your greatest hero, and why?

I talk about my grandparents a lot so I’m gonna switch it up for this one and say my parents for encouraging a literary existence from a young age even though we lived in places that had no emphasis on that. They would put me in the library camps, writers camps, all the kind of crap in Moose Jaw and Saskatoon when I was a kid. They always believed in the power of story, writing, literature, and really encouraged my own growth in that. They supported reading everything and anything from a young age and really built the foundation through that for myself to write the way I do now.

Your novel, Prairie Edge, is called "a propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp critique of modern activism." Can you talk about this a bit more, and share some of the challenges you faced bringing the book to life?

I don’t know if I would necessarily say it’s a crime thriller, it depends on what your definition of crime is. Sure it’s a crime when it comes to the way that Western colonial society has structured laws on how to actively hold down Indigenous peoples and our different ways and being. But for the characters, Ezzy, Grey, and crew, they’re not criminals. They’re people who are trying to restore an Indigenous way of being to the prairie through actively looking at ways of taking the land back.

But I also wanted to show that Western neoliberal society often glorifies people who are seen through social media as altruistic, “warrior-esque” individuals, and to show that people are
nuanced, whether they show that or not on public platforms.

The first draft was an absolute breeze to write. I had been imagining this story for years leading up to it. But the subsequent editing to make it complete/whole was very, very, annoying and hard. I understand editing, but god damn it is a lot more fun to create the world rather than edit it.

What’s a great Canadian book that changed you in some way?

When I read Alistair McLeod’s No Great Mischief in my undergrad it blew my mind. Up until that point I thought that you had to write stories about Toronto/New York or other places. I didn’t realize that stories about people living rural, poor, blue collar existences could carry so much weight and emotion and show how beautiful the community and life is. I thought for the first time ever about how my upbringing could be translated into my writing. How I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t and instead could build on my own story, my family’s story. That book still slaps.

**

Excerpt from Prairie Edge

EZZY

Around two in the morning, Grey dropped me off at an outskirt suburb of Edmonton. The kind where there were no numbers to tell you where you were on the grid, just the name of a landscape feature like Rolling Meadows, followed by a Blvd., Way, Point, Lane. I assumed that rich people loved not having numbers in their addresses. Why else would you live out here? Grey took off down the block in her beat-up Honda Crv. I watched the tail lights until they disappeared around a suburb bend. Rich people also loved curves in the road.

The neighbourhood that I grew up in was on the central grid. Straight-line avenues and streets as far as the eye could see. You couldn’t steal a vehicle in the neighbourhood. Everyone knew who you were there, or people would be out and about. If you were into stealing vehicles, you would catch a lift or take a bus out to a random sleepy suburb just like the one Grey had dropped me off in and jack a truck out there. Then the cops couldn’t pattern you either. I used to be quite good at it.

When I saw the older Ford F-150 parked on the street, I felt that old familiar rush kick up. The one I used to live with constantly when I was on the edge of either being locked up or becoming rich. That instant shot of adrenaline. As badly as I didn’t want to go back to jail, letting Grey down would be worse. If she dreamt bison, I’d make that happen. What else did I have going on? Being a bison rustler made me feel like I was living in an old-time western movie. The kind that hired Italians to play the Indians.

I jimmied open the door of the F-150 with a coat hanger I’d brought with me. I used a flathead screwdriver to snap the wire case open. I couldn’t make out the individual wires in the darkness, and had forgotten to bring a headlamp or something that would allow me to see. Back when we did this regularly, we used those headlamps you could get at Safeway or convenience stores. The cheap ones. Then everyone started using the phone flashlights. I had neither with me now. I’d have to try to turn on the cab light. No problem in the city, but out here in suburb territory, any light would draw attention. Banking on the darkness of a neighbourhood without streetlights and asleep under 2,500-square-foot roofs for some sense of anonymity. I hoped it was enough to get this done.

I pulled out the bundle of wires that held the power for the battery, ignition, and starter, stripped back the insulation on the red battery wire and brown ignition wire, and wove them together. The dashboard came alive. I had to move fast now. I took the last dangling yellow wire, stripped it of insulation and touched it to the connected battery wire, just enough to get a spark going. The engine kicked up and I revved the truck like a kid would a standard when he was learning how to shift. I cranked the wheel to the left to break the steering lock and I was gone. It was a skill that a person would never forget. Like riding a bike or throwing an ace up your sleeve. Once you learned it, you always had it.

You had to love the older vehicles. No alarm systems, and the wires just hanging there ready to roll. It really didn’t take much. I wasn’t sure what would happen with the newer, more computerized vehicles. I had never tried to steal one of them before. But something told me that they didn’t make them this easy. My buddies used to tell stories of the old ones where you could just jam that flathead screwdriver in the ignition and it would always turn. Then they put in the anti-theft thing, but the wires would still work. Then the companies got smart and started locking it all down with the new computers that ran the whole thing. I was sure someone had come up with some way to steal those too, but that was a little too much for me. I had enough trouble turning on a computer at the library, let alone hacking into some car. I’d leave that to the kids. Still, I never felt bad about taking these older vehicles. The insurance payout was probably worth more than the unit itself.

Grey figured that we would get the bison from the same field that little khaki nerd boy had told us about before telling us to move along. From the main gate you could be in and out of there in five minutes, tops. The bison were usually milling about on the viewing road that arched through the field in a semicircle, especially at night when they’d want to lick the salt off the road. It was the same spot the park had set up with the corrals to load and unload the bison. They also put water and leftover feed there during the winter to keep the bison close. It kept national park tourists happy if they could see the big beasts without leaving their vehicles.

I pulled into the loop and saw Grey parked there in a big Dodge dually pickup truck with a livestock trailer hitched up to it. I flashed my lights at her and she fired up the truck, and I drove to where my headlights would help guide her. Grey backed the livestock trailer up to the corral with the precision of someone who had done this a hundred times in a life. I was about to step out to help her align the livestock trailer with the loading ramp, but could see that this was something she didn’t need any assistance with. She rammed the loading ramp with the gate, hopped out of the truck but kept it running, walked around to the back to open the trailer’s doors, and hitched the chains around the fence sides to keep them propped open. When she was done, she walked over to me. Beads of sweat were running down my face, freezing in the cold air before they hit my mouth. My hands had been gripping the steering wheel so tightly that they started aching with a dull pain. Grey got into the passenger seat and I immediately felt better. I took my hands off the wheel and stretched them out.

Excerpted from Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr. Copyright © 2024 Conor Kerr. Published by Strange Light/McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.