Shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize
The Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions returns with a frenetic, propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp critique of modern activism and challenges readers to consider what “Land Back” might really look like.

Meet Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey’s uncle’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. But as Grey becomes increasingly single-minded in her newfound calling, their act of protest puts the pair and those close to them in peril, with devastating and sometimes fatal consequences.

For readers drawn to the electric storytelling of Morgan Talty and the taut register of Stephen Graham Jones, Conor Kerr’s Prairie Edge is at once a gripping, darkly funny caper and a raw reckoning with the wounds that persist across generations.

Conor Kerr is a Métis Ukrainian writer. A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is a descendant of the Lac Ste. Anne Métis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty Four and Six territories in Saskatchewan. In 2020 he received the Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and in 2021 was awarded the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Best Canadian Stories 2020 and published in literary magazines across Canada. He is the author of the poetry collection An Explosion of Feathers and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and won a 2022 ReLit Award. His poetry collection Old Gods is forthcoming with Nightwood Editions in 2023.

Conor Kerr's profile page

• Short-listed, Scotiabank Giller Prize

Shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

"Prairie Edge is both a propulsive crime narrative built around successive, compounding blunders and a work of literary art that tells us about what it means to live in a world where action and rhetoric around decolonization fail to align....Kerr extracts maximum amounts of comedy and pathos from the novel’s premise while populating this fictional world with resonant characters whose difficult experiences with group homes, social services, and activist circles are softened by enduring family bonds and friendships. Kerr entertains us with a contemporary caper while inviting readers to consider a future that has reckoned with the past.”
—Giller Prize 2024 jury citation

“A powerful…tale of friendship and hope in the face of intergenerational trauma.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Searing yet compassionate, sharp yet tender. Conor Kerr’s Prairie Edge is both a marvel of storytelling and a devastating critique of activists who care more about building their brands than taking care of their kin. Get swept up in this captivating story, then reckon with its startling implications.”
—Alicia Elliott, author of And Then She Fell

“Prairie Edge is a deeply introspective, philosophizing Indigenous Western that is filled with life, love, disaster, and freedom . . . . here we are rustled into trailer, reservation, university, foster care, and prison systems and the violence of imperialism is never once glossed over. Don’t be fooled, this novel also herds us into decolonial activism, sovereignty, and necessary criticisms all the while filled with ‘poets and dreamers’ and the roaring buckle of galloping Indigenous futurities. For fans of Michelle Good, Cody Caetano, and/or Jessica Johns—this book is for you!”
—Joshua Whitehead, author of Making Love with the Land

“This is a novel wise enough to know that the future we all want begins with our imaginations. A story both sharp and fresh, Prairie Edge dreams bison back into our everyday lives, our cities, and our future. Author Conor Kerr believes the prairie is calling the bison back, and in this novel he dares to braid threads of a storied past with the troubled present and a vision of a beautiful future.”
—Michelle Porter, author of A Grandmother Begins the Story