Born to a Métis father and a Mennonite mother, Katherena Vermette grew up in Winnipeg’s predominantly Indigenous North End. “I spent years trying to run away… before I realized there was no other place I wanted to be—or could be, really,” she said in a 2013 interview. North End Love Songs, her first poetry collection, won a 2013 Governor General’s Award, and The Break, her first novel, won a Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature. Her acclaimed short film this river, co-directed with Erika MacPherson, profiles Drag the Red, a grassroots, volunteer-driven initiative to search for missing Indigenous people.