Billy-Ray Belcourt on A Minor Chorus: A Novel: Fiction

Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation and the author of the poetry collections This Wound is a World, and NDN Coping Mechanisms, and the nonfiction A History of My Brief Body. He is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In A Minor Chorus: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company), set against the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel. His work is informed by a series of poignant encounters, including a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; and a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus is the first novel from a rising literary figure that brings the modern queer and Indigenous experience into sharp relief.