Shortlists and Eligibility!

This last week has brought great news! Seventhblade has been shortlisted for the Saskatchewan Book Awards: First Book Award, is a finalist for the 2025 Foreword Indies in Fantasy (Adult Fiction), and is also on the eligibility list for Best Novel for CSFFA’s 2025 Aurora Award! I’m so honored by the recognition Seventhblade is receiving.

As an Eligible title for an Aurora, Seventhblade’s next step is to make it into the top 5 shortlist. To do this, members of the CSFFA can vote to help get it there! A yearly membership is $10.00 and only open to Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Shortlist nominations end April 4th. Voting for the winning title opens June 6 and closes on July 18!

Saskatchewan Foundation of the Arts Indigenous Literary Award (Dick & Jane Endowment Fund)

I am thrilled to share that I have been awarded an endowment by the Saskatchewan Foundation For the Arts to work on book 2 of the Black Dog Trilogy! Endowments and grants like these make it so much easier for writers and artists to focus on creating, and I am so grateful for this opportunity. Congratulations to all the creators chosen for the 2025 awards!

Seventhblade nominated for the 2026 Evergreen Award!

I’m so excited to share that Seventhblade is amongst the 2026 Evergreen Nominees for the Ontario Library Association’s (OLA) Forest of Reading program!

The 2026 nominees for the Evergreen Award are:
– All the Parts We Exile: A Memoir by Roza Nozari (Knopf Canada)
– Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe (House of Anansi Press)
– Fallosophy: My Trip through Life with MS by Ardra Shephard (Douglas & McIntyre)
– Horsefly by Mireille Gagné (Coach House Books)
– It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body by Kate Gies (Scribner Canada)
– Seventhblade by Tonia Laird (ECW Press)
– The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan (Viking Canada)
– Waiting for the Long Night Moon by Amanda Peters (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.)
– What I Know About You by Éric Chacour (Coach House Books)
– Where the Jasmine Blooms by Zeina Sleiman (Roseway Publishing)

Learn more about the Forest of Reading here: https://forestofreading.com/
Follow the Forest of Reading on Instagram @forestofreadingprogram

THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

World English rights to tonia laird’s trilogy: BLACK DOG, BLACK DOG REIGN, and BLACK DOG RIOT sold to senior editor, katherena vermette, and children’s editor, Yashaswi Kesanakurthy, at Simon & Schuster Canada by Marilyn Biderman and Amanda Orozco! First book set to be released fall 2026!

Reviews for Seventhblade!

Now Available!

Set in a fragmented, fascinating world of dangerous magics and cryptic gods, and loaded with complex characters and intricately staged action, Seventhblade is a masterful new fantasy adventure from a bright, emerging Indigenous voice.
For readers of N.K. Jemisin and Rebecca Roanhorse, a fast-paced, anti-colonial action-adventure fantasy that explores twisted power dynamics and the effects of settler colonialism.

ORDER HERE!

Published by ECW Press

Latest Posts!

• Seventhblade: The Exiled God
  by tonia laird
  February 6, 2026
  As one of the two points of view in Seventhblade, Elraiche brings an outsider’s narrative to the story. An outsider who is from a foreign land. An outsider who a god walking amongst mortals. His experiences and point of view allow the reader to take a step back from the story and learn from anContinue reading “Seventhblade: The Exiled God”
• My god, AI. You want writers to love you? Do any of this!
  by tonia laird
  September 13, 2025
• The Official Announcement!
  by tonia laird
  August 28, 2025
  I am so excited to share that I am working on a supernatural, climate-dystopian YA (young adult) trilogy set in the Canadian prairies! Rights to BLACK DOG, BLACK DOG REIGN, and BLACK DOG RIOT were sold to sold to senior editor katherena vermette and children’s editor Yashaswi Kesanakurthy at Simon & Schuster Canada by myContinue reading “The Official Announcement!”
• Northern Michif and Seventhblade
  by tonia laird
  July 26, 2025
  In Seventhblade, the Ibinnashae (children of Ibinnas and non-Ibinnas) use Northern Michif as their heritage language. I was lucky enough to have translation help from Vince Ahenakew, an educator and language keeper from Île-à-la-Crosse, which one of the main communities that speak this dialect. Vince kindly fixed my attempts at translating dialogue as I amContinue reading “Northern Michif and Seventhblade”
• Such a lovely (and well-researched!) review of Seventhblade
  by tonia laird
  June 29, 2025
• Seventhblade: Peasant Farming and Social Darwinism
  by tonia laird
  June 25, 2025
  The Convenient Lie That Caused the Real Destruction of Thriving Indigenous Farm Communities In Seventhblade, I’ve used some historical (and contemporary) acts of forced assimilation, segregation, and genocide against Turtle Island Indigenous communities and individuals as a basis for my worldbuilding concerning the Ecrelian colonization of the Indigenous Ibinnas, Ibinnashae, and Iqounicha of Kaspine. OneContinue reading “Seventhblade: Peasant Farming and Social Darwinism”

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