911³Ô¹Ï

This event is supported by 911³Ô¹Ï David Lam Centre in partnership with Granville Island and Vancouver Writer’s Festival.

Julian Brave NoiseCat’s debut novel We Survived the Night, was an instant National Bestseller, named one of The New Yorker’s 2025, NPR’s Books We Love, Elle’s 29 Best Nonfiction Books of 2025, CBC’s Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2025, The Globe and Mail’s Globe 100, and Audible’s 15 best nonfiction listens of 2025.

Through a dazzling blend of history and mythology, memoir and reportage, NoiseCat grapples with the erasure of North America’s First Peoples and the trauma that cascades across generations while illuminating the vital Indigenous cultural, environmental, and political movements shaping the future.

Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life alongside an intimate, deeply powerful reckoning between a father and a son. A soulful, formally daring and indelible work from a virtuosic new voice.

Julian will be joined in conversation with Indian Summer Festival Executive Artistic Director Am Johal, with a book signing to follow, with books to purchase on site from our official book seller, Iron Dog Books.

Biography

Julian Brave NoiseCat is an Oscar-nominated writer, filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. He made history as the first Indigenous filmmaker from North America to receive an Oscar nomination for his directorial debut Sugarcane at the 2025 Academy Awards. He is the first Indigenous North American author to ever write about healing from intergenerational trauma by getting stoned with his dad in the pages of The New York Times Magazine.