Read Our Q&A with Jessica Johns, Author of Bad Cree

Briefly tell us about your book.

Bad Cree is about a Cree woman named Mackenzie who wakes up one day to realise she can bring items back and forth from her dreams. These dreams quickly turn into blended nightmare-memories about a traumatic event that happened one night years ago. When these nightmares start to have real-life consequences, Mackenzie returns home to her family, who she has been separated from for a number of years. The family has to navigate their own complex relationships with one another, but they band together to figure out what this force is descending on them. The novel is about grief, loss, accountability, and above all else, love and kinship.

What inspired the idea behind this book?

Quite fittingly, a dream inspired the concept for this book. I dreamt that I could bring things back and forth from my dreams and the waking world. The dream was so vivid and strange and beautiful, and I loved being able to explore that further in the story it eventually turned into.

How did you think of the title of the book?

In Bad Cree, Mackenzie has an internal battle with herself over the concepts of “goodness” and “badness,” and in particular, what makes someone “good” or “bad.” When the dreams start to get increasingly worse, she even asks her aunt, “Am I a bad Cree?” Because she thinks that these things happening to her must, somehow, be because of some inherent badness in her. A lot of these feelings are colonial trauma and shame that she and her family don’t deserve to carry, and I hope in her journey she learns that assigning goodness and badness to herself, even if she’s made mistakes, isn’t what makes her deserving of love.

What is something that has influenced you as a writer?

Being in the world and in the community has been massively influential to my writing. I love to garden, take part in land-based learning and activities, go to brunch and games nights with my friends. I think not writing is just as important as writing when it comes to story creation. If I didn’t know what it felt like to have my hands in the dirt and to fall in love with my friends, how could I write about joy?

What’s your daily writing routine like and what are you working on at the moment?

When I was writing Bad Cree, I wrote every night on my phone while I was lying in bed. Most of the novel was written in my notes app. It’s when I felt the most relaxed and creative. Now that has completely changed. I’m working on a collection of short ghost stories, and I write every morning for a half hour while I drink my tea. It’s when the world feels the most quiet and I feel like I can carve out some time for myself.

Buy a copy of Bad Cree here.