Francine Cunningham is a Canadian Indigenous writer, artist and educator. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in The Malahat Review, the anthologies Boobs: Women Explore What It Means to Have Breasts (Caitlin Press) and Best Canadian Essays 2017 (Tightrope Books), and was longlisted for the 2018 Edna Staebler Personal Essay. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Grain as the winner of the Short Grain Writing Contest in 2018, The Puritan, Joyland, Echolocation, The Maynard and more. She is a graduate of the UBC Creative Writing MFA program, winner of the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished prose, winner of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, and a recipient of Telus’ 2017 STORYHIVE web series grant. On/Me is her first book. www.francinecunningham.ca

“Cunningham doesn’t pull her punches, but they are quick, stinging hits, capturing difficult realities, the in-between worlds of belonging and not, of bearing the assumptions that make us a part of a group or alone. The dangerous smoulder of her mind is masterfully harnessed to clarity, illuminating pain and turbulence without being tragic.” —Eden Robinson, author of Trickster Drift

“Potent artistry, redolent with the beauty and bitterness of everyday life: each poem draws you in—compels you on to the next, yet you linger. Every page a chef-d’oeuvre—katawasisin!” —Darrel McLeod, author of Governor General award-winning memoir Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age

“In this collection, Francine Cunningham’s crisp and gorgeous poems take on so much of what it is to be a person: to consider the meaning of family, to experience grief, to live with mental illness, to eat KFC, to tease and to laugh. With pitch-perfect details, these poems get personal and emotionally universal, and show us how humour and love are the things that hold us together. These poems hold stories that need to be told.” —Dina Del Bucchia, author of It’s a Big Deal!"