my heart is a stray bullet is the first collection of poems by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm. The poems in this collection examine issues of identity, positionality, desire, and unity from the perspective of a First Nations woman of mixed ancestry.

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is a member of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, on the Saugeen Peninsula in Ontario. Kateri is an Assistant Professor, teaching Creative Writing, Indigenous Literatures and Oral Traditions in the English Department at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. She has taught creative writing and Indigenous literatures at the University of Manitoba, the Banff Centre's Aboriginal Arts Program, and the En'owkin International School of Writing in partnership with the University of Victoria. Her publications encompass poetry, fiction, non-fiction, radio plays, television and film, libretti, graphic novels, and spoken word. Her teaching and creative work is firmly decolonial, a practice of cultural resurgence, affirmation and survivance. She is a recipient of a REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award for writing, her 2015 book of short stories, The Stone Collection, was a finalist for the Sarton Literary Book Awards, and her collaborative recording A Constellation of Bones was a nominee for a 2008 Canadian Aboriginal Music Award. Kateri was the 2011-2012 Poet Laureate for Owen Sound and North Grey. She founded and coordinated the first Honouring Words: International Indigenous Authors Celebration Tour in 2003 and initiated and was a co-organizer for the first Indigenous Comics Symposium in 2021. She is the founder, publisher, and art director for Kegedonce Press. (Re)Generation: The Poetry of Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, selected and edited by Dallas Hunt, was released in August 2021. She is currently completing work on a new collection of poetry and a collection of humourous short stories.

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm's profile page

"Damm's cries for belonging seem to touch chords for all humankind." -The Ottawa Citizen.
"Thank you for this medicine bundle. It's filled with feathers laced withoutrage, courage, whispers from the heart and a sincere unyielding hope." -Richard Van Camp, author of Angel Wing Splash Pattern.