Stories First marketed the films but did not produce them. Update, June 18: This story has been updated from a previous version to clarify Stories First’s role on Indian Horse and Monkey Beach. The option for Jonny Appleseed was negotiated by Arsenal Pulp Press president Brian Lam, Stories First CEO and producer Leena Minifie, and Paige Sisley and Stephanie Sinclair at CookeMcDermid Agency. Whitehead is currently at work on his next book Making Love with the Land, a non-fiction essay collection about Indigeneity, mental health, and sexuality that will be published by Knopf in the spring of 2022. This clear delineation between trans and Two-Spirit became even more evident when the author of Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead, withdrew his book full-metal indigi-queer from consideration after it received a Lambda nomination for the Trans Poetry category. No release date has been announced for the Jonny Appleseed adaptation.

Stories First marketed Indigenous-centred adaptations such as Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse and Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach. It is currently number two on Bookmanager’s Canadian Fiction chart, after Michelle Good’s GG-winning Five Little Indians, which has also been optioned for a screen adaptation. It was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, and won this year’s Canada Reads. Jonny Appleseed, the story of a Two-Spirit Indigenous sex worker’s return to his reservation, has already been widely celebrated since it was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2018. “Jonny is already such an animate kin to me, and so many folks have loved and cared for him on the page, I cannot express how thrilled I am that he will be potentially animate onscreen as well,” Whitehead said in a statement. Jonny Appleseed tells the story of Jonny, a young Two-Spirit man reckoning with his life and love. The Indigenous-owned and -operated production company is based in Vancouver. Intersections of Queerness and Indigeneity: Double Oppression. Joshua Whitehead’s debut novel Jonny Appleseed has been optioned for the screen by Stories First.

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