When the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, renowned artist, musician, and author of Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, began writing each other letters—a gesture sparked by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. These letters soon grew into a powerful exchange about where we go from here.

Rehearsals for Living is a captivating and visionary work—part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and reiterating the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment, Maynard and Simpson create something new: an urgent demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up other ways of ordering earthly life.

The author

Robyn Maynard is the author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (2017), a CBC, Toronto Star, and Globe and Mail national bestseller. Policing Black Lives was designated one of the best 100 books of 2017 by The Hill Times, and is the winner of the 2017 Errol Morris Book Award. It was also a finalist for The Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers; an Atlantic Book Award; the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction; and the Concordia University First Book Prize. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, as well as glowing reviews in Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, NOW Toronto, Maclean’s, and Ottawa Citizen. It was translated into French as NoirEs sous surveillance: Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada, and won the prestigious Prix des libraires award in 2019.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician, and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of seven books, including the newly released non-fiction A Short History of the Blockade, and the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies. Leanne has also released four albums including f(l)ight and Noopiming Sessions, and her new work Theory of lce.