A writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation, Billy-Ray Belcourt is a rising literary star. His debut book of poetry, This Wound is a World, won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize. His second collection of poems, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, and his collection of essays and vignettes, A History of My Brief Body, were both bestsellers.

Joining us livestreamed from Vancouver, Billy-Ray discusses his brilliant debut novel, A Minor Chorus. An incisive and moving exploration of what it means to be queer and Indigenous today. A Minor Chorus weaves conversations, interviews and stories of grief and survival in a North Alberta community with lyrical existential reflections. A Minor Chorus explores how the self is entangled with the social, the sayable with what remains unsaid, and how we can breach the prisons we live inside.

Billy-Ray is in conversation with Alyawarr scholar, Kathryn Gilbey.

A writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation, Billy-Ray Belcourt is a rising literary star. His debut book of poetry, This Wound is a World, won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize. His second collection of poems, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, and his collection of essays and vignettes, A History of My Brief Body, were both bestsellers.
Joining us livestreamed from Vancouver, Billy-Ray discusses his brilliant debut novel, A Minor Chorus. An incisive and moving exploration of what it means to be queer and Indigenous today. A Minor Chorus weaves conversations, interviews and stories of grief and survival in a North Alberta community with lyrical existential reflections. A Minor Chorus explores how the self is entangled with the social, the sayable with what remains unsaid, and how we can breach the prisons we live inside.
Billy-Ray is in conversation with Alyawarr scholar, Kathryn Gilbey.

The NT Writers Festival is an annual celebration of stories, language, culture and ideas shaped by place that alternates each year between Mparntwe/Alice Springs and Garramilla/Darwin. In 2023, NTWF returned to Mparntwe and explored the theme of mwantye-le awaye | listen deeply. In Arrernte, mwantye-le awaye means to listen closely, to give things attention. In 2023, NT Writers Festival brought readers, writers and lovers of stories together to listen deeply – to each other, and to a diverse line-up of writers from across the country who shared truths, invited us to listen to the land, and helped us imagine a different future. 


Recorded by 8CCC Community Radio. Theme music composed by Vito Lucarelli. 

The <a href="https://www.ntwriters.com.au/nt-writers-festival/">NT Writers Festival</a> is an annual celebration of stories, language, culture and ideas shaped by place that alternates each year between Mparntwe/Alice Springs and Garramilla/Darwin. In 2023, NTWF returned to Mparntwe and explored the theme of mwantye-le awaye | listen deeply. In Arrernte, mwantye-le awaye means to listen closely, to give things attention. In 2023, NT Writers Festival brought readers, writers and lovers of stories together to listen deeply – to each other, and to a diverse line-up of writers from across the country who shared truths, invited us to listen to the land, and helped us imagine a different future. 
 Recorded by 8CCC Community Radio. Theme music composed by Vito Lucarelli.

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