Ivan E. Coyote is a Canadian spoken word performer, writer, and LGBT advocate. Coyote has won many accolades for their collections of short stories, novels, and films. They also visit schools to tell stories and give writing workshops. The CBC has called Coyote a "gender-bending author who loves telling stories and performing in front of a live audience." Coyote is non-binary and uses singular they pronouns. Many of Coyote's stories are about gender, identity, and social justice. Some of their favorite books are Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. Coyote currently resides in Vancouver, BC.
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 co-founded "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,Ivan Coyote#cite note-Winnipeg Free Press-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, 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
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, was adapted from a live show that was performed by their theater troop, Taste This. Close to Spiderman and One Man's Trash are both collections of stories told by Coyote's grandmother and written by Coyote. Missed Her is another book of compiled short stories. The works were first published in columns with Xtra Vancouver. One in Every Crowd 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, has won the Stonewall Book Award Honor—an award given to outstanding LGBT literature—and has been long-listed for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction in 2017. Rebent Sinner is a collection of stories and personal essays that has been favourably received. Coyote toured in 2019 with musician Sarah MacDougall, performing selections from the book along with music.
Reception
Coyote has made significant contributions to the representation of queerness in 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, and their collections One Man's Trash and Loose End received similar recognition as their debut, with outlets such as Herizons and the Lambda Book Report which praised the brevity and directness of Coyote's writing as it relates to depictions 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 British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and winning the 2017 Stonewall Book Award.
