Approaching Fire

***IPPY AWARDS: BEST REGIONAL NON-FICTION: CANADA-WEST – SILVER***

***INDIGENOUS VOICES AWARDS 2021, PUBLISHED PROSE IN ENGLISH: CREATIVE NON-FICTION AND LIFE-WRITING: FINALIST***

***FIRST NATION COMMUNITIES READ AWARDS 2021/22: LONGLIST***

***NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, REGIONAL (NON-FICTION): FINALIST***

***THE MIRAMICHI READER'S 2020 MOST PROMISING AUTHOR AWARD***

***BMO WINTERSET AWARD 2020 LONGLIST***


In Approaching Fire, Michelle Porter embarks on a quest to find her great-grandfather, the Métis fiddler and performer Léon Robert Goulet. Through musicology, jigs and reels, poetry, photographs, and the ecology of fire, Porter invests biography with the power of reflective ingenuity, creating a portrait which expands beyond documentation into a private realm where truth meets metaphor.



Weaving through multiple genres and traditions, Approaching Fire fashions a textual documentary of rescue and insight, and a glowing contemplation of the ways in which loss can generate unbridled renewal.