Ivan Coyote

Career

Coyote started performing spoken word in 1992, and their work deals with contemporary issues of family, class gender, identity and social justice. In 1996, Coyote cofounded “Taste This”, a queer performance troupe with Anna Camilleri, Zoe Eakle, and Lyndell Montgomery. “Taste This” incorporates live music, poetry and story-telling into their performance repertoire. The group disbanded in 2000. In 2001, Coyote briefly taught short fiction at Capilano University in North Vancouver. In 2010 Coyote, Camilleri and Montgomery regrouped as “Swell”, and premiered at the 2010 Vancouver Pride in Art Festival.

They joined Arsenal Pulp Press in 2000 and have published 10 books with them. Coyote regularly combines storytelling and music and has worked with a number of musicians including Veda Hille, Dan Mangan and Rae Spoon. Coyote has been a columnist for the gay magazines Xtra! and Xtra! West for a number of years and regularly contributes to The Georgia Straight and CBC Radio.

Coyote has been writer-in-residence of a number of organisations, including Carleton University in 2007, Vancouver Public Library in 2009, the University of Winnipeg in 2011,[6] and the University of Western Ontario in 2012. They also served on the jury of the 2012 Dayne Ogilvie Prize, a literary award for emerging LGBT writers in Canada, selecting Amber Dawn as that year's winner.

In 2012, Coyote and Spoon collaborated on Gender Failure, a touring multimedia show in which they performed music and spoken word pieces about their failed attempts at fitting into the gender binary. A performance of Gender Failure, as performed at the 27th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, is also available on YouTube. A book based on the show was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2014.

On November 14, 2015 Coyote did a TED talk in Vancouver entitled "We all need a safe place to pee," where they discuss the need to have gender neutral bathrooms in all public places.

In 2016, they delivered the Florence Bird Lecture at Carleton University. Their lecture was titled "Neither, Nor: How to Circumnavigate the Gender Binary in Seven Thousand Easy Steps".

Writing

Ivan Coyote has written eleven books: one with Press Gang Publishers and ten with Arsenal Pulp Press. Common themes in their work involve identity, gender, community, and class.

Coyote’s first book, Boys Like Her (Press Gang Publishers, 1998), was adapted from a live show that was performed their theatre troop, Taste This.

Close to Spiderman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000) and One Man’s Trash (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002) are both collections of stories told by Coyote’s grandmother and written by Coyote.

Missed Her (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010) is another book of compiled short stories. The works were first published in columns with Xtra Vancouver.

One in Every Crowd (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2012) is an anthology of Coyote’s work that was put together by the request of high school teachers and librarians who wanted to share Coyote’s writing with students. Without more mature parts of their writing, their works could be accepted by school administration and parents. It was specifically composed for queer youth.

Their most recent novel, Tomboy Survival Guide (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016), has won the Stonewall Book Award Honor—an award given to outstanding GBLT literature—and has been long-listed for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction in 2017.

Reception

Coyote’s works have been largely renowned, with particular attention paid to their contributions to the representation of queerness in the landscape of Canadian literature. Their first collection of short stories, Close to Spider Man, was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for short fiction, and it received widespread acclaim across the Canadian critical community for its semi-autobiographical depiction of young, queer women growing up in the Yukon. Although their short stories received no awards recognition until their collection The Slow Fix was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award in 2008, their collections One Man’s Trash and Loose End received similar acclaim to their debut, with outlets such as Herizons and the Lambda Book Report praising the brevity and directness of Coyote’s writing, particularly as it relates to their depiction of the complexities of gender, sexuality, and identity.

Bow Grip, Coyote’s only full-length novel, was the winner of the 2007 ReLit Award for Best Fiction and the Stonewall Honor Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Ferro Grumley Award. Their 2016 autobiography Tomboy Survival Guide also garnered numerous accolades, having been long-listed for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and winning the 2017 Stonewall Book Award.