Celebrate thirty years of radical publishing with Fernwood Publishing’s podcast, Thirtywood. Highlighting some of Fernwood’s most impactful authors, each of the fifteen episodes is hosted by Nora Loreto and asks how radical books contribute to the work of political movements. Featuring authors like Renee Linklater, Shawn Wilson, El Jones and many more, Thirtywood embraces the dynamism of transformative world-building, the power of critical inquiry, and the joy of justice. Join Nora and our guests as they discuss some of today’s most pressing issues in social movements and independent political publishing.
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
March 15, 2023
This episode features a conversation with Colleen Cardinal.
Colleen Cardinal is Nehiyaw Iskwew from Onihcikiskowapowin Saddle Lake First Nation Alberta, daughter of a residential school survivor, 60s scoop adoptee and MMIWG family member and social justice activist organizer. She is co-founder of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network and has successfully organized two national Indigenous Adoptee Gatherings in 2014 and 2015. Colleen is the proud mother of four grown children and enjoys spending all her free time with her grandchildren.
Featured books: Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else): A 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
March 1, 2023
Episode featuring Pam Palmater. Pam is a Mi’kmaw lawyer, professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is the author of Warrior Life, Indigenous Nationhood and Beyond Blood.
Featured books: Warrior Life: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence, Indigenous Nationhood: Empowering Grassroots Citizens
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
February 15, 2023
Episode featuring the author of Insurgent Love, Ardath Whynacht.
Ardath Whynacht is an activist and writer who works for and with survivors of state and family violence. She teaches sociology at Mount Allison University and lives on unceded Mi’kmaw territory.
Featured books: Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
February 1, 2023
In this episode, A.J. talks about writing about social change and the duty that activists have to collectively tell our own stories.
A. J. Withers organized with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty for over 20 years, including as a paid organizer. They are the author of A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economies of Social Working (with Chris Chapman) and Disability Politics and Theory and numerous other articles and book chapters. A. J. recently completed a PhD in social work at York University.
They are the Ruth Wynn Woodward (RWW) Junior Chair at Simon Fraser University.
Featured books: Disability Politics and Theory and Fight To Win
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
January 21, 2023
In this episode, Nora talks with Danny Paul, author of two Fernwood books: Chief Lightning Bolt and We Were Not the Savages. Danny talks about his life, activism and how his book We Were Not The Savages changed the way that Mi’kmaq communities were understood by settlers both in history and today.
Daniel N. Paul was born in 1938 on the Indian Brook Reserve, Nova Scotia, and now resides in Halifax with his wife Patricia. Paul, a freelance lecturer and journalist, is an ardent activist for human rights. He is a former justice of the peace and a former member of the NS Police Commission and has served on several other provincial commissions, including the Human Rights Commission and the Nova Scotia Department of Justice’s Court Re-structuring Task Force. He holds, among many awards, honorary degrees from the University of Sainte Anne and Dalhousie University and is a member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of Nova Scotia. Previously, Paul was employed by the Department of Indian Affairs and was the founding executive director of the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM). His writing career includes a novel, Chief Lightning Bolt, several booklets, magazine articles, hundreds of newspaper columns, chapters for a dozen or so edited books.
Website: http://www.danielnpaul.com
Featured books: Chief Lightning Bolt and We Were Not The Savages, First Nations History, 4th ed.
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
January 14, 2023
This episode features Anne Bishop. We talk about allyship, activism, fiction and non-fiction writing, and how to write about concepts that are always changing.
Anne Bishop has been an activist for four decades in organizations dedicated to local, international, environmental, food, fibre and LGBT justice. She is the co author of five books and author of two: Becoming an Ally: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in People and Beyond Token Change: Breaking the Cycle of Oppression in Institutions.
Featured books: Becoming an Ally, 3rd Edition and Beyond Token Change
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
November 30, 2022
In this episode, Shawn discusses writing, Indigenous pedagogy and his book Research of Ceremony.
Shawn Wilson is a Senior Lecturer at Southern Cross University in Australia. He is Opaskwayak Cree from northern Manitoba whose research focuses on the inter-related concepts of identity, health and healing, culture and well-being.
Featured books: Research Is Ceremony
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
November 16, 2022
In this episode, Lynn Jones and El Jones talk about writing for social change, the power of community and the importance of radical publishing.
El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She teaches at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she was named the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies in 2017. She was Halifax’s Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She is the author of Live from the Afrikan Resistance!, a collection of poems about resisting white colonialism. Her work focuses on social justice issues, such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism and decolonization. Since 2016, she has co-hosted a radio show called Black Power Hour, on CKDU-FM where listeners from prisons call in to rap and read their poetry, providing a voice to people who rarely get a wide audience.
Lynn Jones came to Halifax, Nova Scotia in the early 1970s, where she studied at Dalhousie University through the Transition Year Program (TYP), and earned a Bachelor’s of Arts degree. She then pursued a long career as a Federal Public Service employee, working at the Canadian Employment Centre. During this time, Lynn became an active union member and advocate, and the first Black person to join the executive ranks of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). She was also a National Vice-President of the Canadian Employment and Immigration Union (CEIU). As part of the CLC delegation, in 1994, Lynn traveled to South Africa as an election observer in the first free elections (which saw the election of Nelson Mandela). In 1993 Lynn became the first Canadian-born African Canadian women to run in a Canadian Federal Election, as the New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate in the Halifax riding.
Throughout her life, Lynn has been active in the pursuit of justice, working tireless for many causes and organizations that seek to eradicate racism, secure human rights, and achieve fair labour practices. She has been honoured with many awards including the Queen’s Medal, the Congress of Black Women of Canada’s Women of Excellence award, and the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour Human Rights Award. In 2016, she was recognized with an Honorary Doctorate from Acadia University. Since her retirement from Public Service in 2011, Lynn continues to be active. She is currently the Chair of the Global African Congress (Nova Scotia Chapter), which seeks reparations for the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Featured books: R Is for Reparations, Abolitionist Intimacies, Live from the Afrikan Resistance!
November 3, 2022
In this episode, Kathy talks about the process of learning – how we come to know the things that we know, and how Indigenous academics can decolonize research.
Kathleen Absolon is Anishinaabe kwe from Flying Post First Nation Treaty 9. Her relationships to the land, ancestors, Nation, community, and family deeply informs her re-search. She is a Full Professor in the Indigenous Field of Study, Faculty of Social Work and the Director of the Centre for Indigegogy at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Music is by General Khan.
Featured books: Kaandossiwin, 2nd Edition: How We Come to Know: Indigenous Re-Search Methodologies
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
October 31, 2022
In this conversation, we hear about Frequently Asked White Questions, a new book from Alex Khasnabish and Ajay Parasram.
Ajay Parasram is a multigenerational transnational byproduct of the British empire, with roots in South Asia, the Caribbean and the settler cities of Halifax, Ottawa and Vancouver. He is an associate professor in the Departments of International Development Studies, History and Political Science at Dalhousie University in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), unceded Mi’kma’ki. His research interests surround the colonial present, or the many ways through which strings of historical colonial entanglements continue to tighten the limit of political action today, and how those strings might be undone.
Alex Khasnabish is a writer, researcher and teacher committed to collective liberation living in Halifax, on unceded and unsurrendered Mi’kmaw territory. He is a professor in sociology and anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University. His research focuses on radical imagination, radical politics, social justice and social movements.
Music is by General Khan.
Featured books: Frequently Asked White Questions, Making Sense of Society
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
October 5, 2022
In this conversation, Katłįà talks about her writing process, what it’s like to move between fiction and non-fiction, and how writing can be an avenue for activism.
Katłįà is is a Dene woman from the Northwest Territories. Previously serving as a councilor for her First Nation, Yellowknives Dene, she is an activist, poet and columnist and law student in Indigenous Legal Orders. Katłįà writes about Indigenous injustices with a focus on the North. Katłįà’s first novel, Land-Water-Sky, won the NorthWoods Book Awards (2021).
Music is by General Khan.
Featured books: Land-Water-Sky / Ndè-Tı-Yat’a, This House Is Not a Home, and Northern Wildflower
Use Code: THIRTYWOOD on our website to avail 20% off on all books and authors featured in this episode.
September 23, 2022
Celebrate Fernwood Publishing’s Thirtieth anniversary with this special podcast that features Fernwood authors, their ideas and why Canada needs radical publishing.