Daniel Heath Justice

Daniel Heath Justice (b. 1975) is a Colorado-born citizen of the Cherokee Nation/ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ, raised the third generation of his mother's family in the Rocky Mountain mining town of Victor, Colorado. After a decade living and teaching in the Anishinaabe, Huron-Wendat, and Haudenosaunee territories of southern Ontario, where he worked at the University of Toronto, he now lives with his husband in shíshálh territory on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. He works on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam people, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture and Professor of First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia.

Daniel's research focuses on Indigenous literary expression, with particular emphasis on issues of literary nationalism, kinship, sexuality, and intellectual production. His scholarship and creative work also extend into speculative fiction, animal studies (including badgers and raccoons), and cultural history. He is also a fantasy/wonderworks writer who explores the otherwise possibilities of Indigenous restoration and sovereignty. His newest book is *Raccoon*, volume 100 in the celebrated Animal Series from Reaktion Books.

A few more facts about Daniel:
-he's an amateur ventriloquist with a badger puppet named Digdug;
-he's a lifelong tabletop RPG player whose favoured alignment is Neutral Good and favoured classes are Druid and Ranger;
-his favourite Indigenous writers working right now include Leanne Simpson, LeAnne Howe, Lee Maracle, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Cherie Dimaline, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Joshua Whitehead.
-the speculative fiction writers who had the greatest influence on his imagination growing up include Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and his early pop-culture loves include Masters of the Universe, Ewoks, and Thundercats;
-he's a fierce mustelid partisan with a particular love of badgers--in fact, his favourite tattoo is of the badger symbol used by his character Tobhi from *The Way of Thorn and Thunder*;
-he's a devoted Dolly Parton fan and has seen her in concert three times (but has not, alas, yet been to Dollywood); and
-he is the proud and dedicated human attendant to three very weird and awesome dogs.

In summary, he's a queer Cherokee hobbit who lives and writes in the West Coast temperate rainforest and occasionally emerges to teach and do readings. And he's good with that.

Go to his website, www.danielheathjustice.com, for more information about his published and forthcoming work as well as his irregularly-updated blog.