About Yarrow Magazine

Yarrow Magazine is a digital magazine with a mandate to publish the best new and established Indigenous literary writings in the areas of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and to provide a safe space for emerging editors to learn how to edit Indigenous writing. The name Yarrow began as a way of placing this new literary magazine in direct relation to the land on which our work is conducted and the medicines that grow here. Yarrow co-founder Jessica Johns writes, “Yarrow in Plains Cree is wapanowask, a traditional Cree medicine that can be found all across the prairies. Yarrow is a healing plant, used for stings, sores, insect bites, burns, and earaches, and relieves stomach pain and arthritis. The healing properties of the yarrow plant also reflect the mandate and values of our magazine.” We hope that Yarrow upholds a connection to the place and Peoples with whom we are in relationship with in amiskwaciwaskahikan and to the very nature of the plant medicine whose name we are honoured to represent.

Jordan Abel is a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). NISHGA won both the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres award, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction, and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Abel’s latest work, a novel titled Empty Spaces, is available now from McClelland & Stewart and Yale University Press. Abel completed a Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University in 2019, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures, Research-Creation, and Creative Writing.

Jessica Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Her debut novel, Bad Cree, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, won the MacEwan Book of the Year award, and was a 2024 CBC Canada Reads finalist. 

Conor Kerr is a national award winning (and losing) Metis/Ukrainian writer and bird hunter living in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). Born in Saskatoon, raised in Buffalo Pound Lake and Drayton Valley. He is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta. His Ukrainian family are Settlers on Treaty 4 Territory. Conor is the author of the novels Avenue of Champions (2021), Prairie Edge (2024) and the poetry collections An Explosion of Feathers (2021) and Old Gods (2023). Conor’s debut novel, Avenue of Champions, won the 2022 RELIT Award, was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon/Walrus Debut Novel Award and longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize. Old Gods was shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General’s Award for Poetry and named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2023.

Chelsea Novak is a settler of mixed European descent living in Treaty 6 territory. She is an assistant lecturer in the English and Film Studies Department at the University of Alberta and is currently working on her first novel.

Emerging Editors

Students at the University of Alberta and Indigenous emerging editors living in Canada who are interested in receiving mentorship please contact us through the form below for more information. Volunteers will be invited to edit creative works and to pitch interviews or book reviews.