STARFest presents Amanda Peters in conversation with Diana Davidson

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Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry. Her bestselling debut novel, The Berry Pickers, won the Barnes and Nobel Discover Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Dartmouth Book Award and the Crime Writers of Canada First Crime Novel Award. Amanda Peters lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.

Waiting For The Long Night Moon

In her debut collection of short fiction, Amanda Peters describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place — from contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for the right to clean water. At times sad, sometimes disturbing, but always redemptive, the stories in Waiting for the Long Night Moon will remind you that where there is grief there is also joy, where there is trauma there is resilience and, most importantly, there is power.

Having arrived carrying her few possessions by hand, Lina grows up with only three books to read — about the lives of famous “voyagers” throughout history. As she goes about daily life in the building, she befriends three eccentric neighbours, each with a story to share.

Diana Davidson lives and writes in Edmonton in Treaty 6 Territory and in the homeland of the Métis Nation. Her novel Pilgrimage was a finalist for the 2014 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award. Her essay “Ahead of the Ice” won a Writers Guild of Alberta prize and was published in Alberta Views. Her most recent publication is a story called “Waxwings and War Brides” and is based on her Dutch grandmother coming to Alberta after WWII. “Waxwings and War Brides” appeared in the spring 2025 volume of Consequence Forum, a war writing journal.