Your NU Reading List
Are you looking for new additions to your summer reading list? The Nipissing community is rich with many talented authors whose published works are inspiring readers across Canada.
Here is a list of literary works written by Nipissing community members including faculty, alumni, and honorary degree recipients:
Novels
The Return of the Nish
by Dr. Tyson Stewart, Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies
Published: June 6, 2026
Gerry Smith grew up in a small town about fifty-five kilometres from Temagami, the hometown of his long-absent father, Dale King. But he’s never met the once-legendary hockey player. Even after Gerry, as an adult, reconnects with his Anishinaabe relatives on his dad’s side of the family, Dale remains a mystery — a missing puzzle piece and a mythic villain. It’s not until his late twenties, juggling a commercial pilot career, a troubled marriage, and a young son of his own, that Gerry gets a call from Dale. Meeting for the first time in a dodgy sports bar in Toronto, Dale pitches Gerry on a dangerous but lucrative business venture, setting in motion an unlikely partnership that will test how far both father and son will go in the name of family.
Get your copy here or at your local bookstore.
Bad Juliet
by Giles Blunt, Nipissing Honorary Degree Recipient (2014)
Published: August 2025
Recently jilted by his fiancé, Paul Gascoyne takes a job as a tutor to the patients at the Trudeau Sanitarium in upstate New York. There, in the icebound beauty of the Adirondack Mountains, he finds himself drawn to Sarah Ballard, a beautiful but enigmatic young woman, traumatized by her past aboard the ill-fated ship Lusitania. To rouse her out of her gloom, Paul encourages her to write a memoir.
Moon of the Crusted Snow
by Waubgeshig Rice, Nipissing Honorary Degree Recipient (2023)
Published: October 2018
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
In Winter I Get Up at Night
by Jane Urquhart, Nipissing Honorary Degree Recipient (2006)
Published: January 2026
In the early morning dark, Emer McConnell rises for a day of teaching music in the schools of rural Saskatchewan. While she travels the snowy roads in the gathering light, she begins another journey, one of recollection and introspection, and one that, through the course of Jane Urquhart’s brilliant new novel, will leave the reader forever changed.
Three Day Road
by Joseph Boyden, Nipissing Honorary Degree Recipient (2009)
Published: May 2008
It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is gravely wounded and addicted to morphine. As Niska slowly paddles her canoe on the three-day journey to bring Xavier home, travelling through the stark but stunning landscape of Northern Ontario, their respective stories emerge—stories of Niska’s life among her kin and of Xavier’s horrifying experiences in the killing fields of Ypres and the Somme.
Sons of Tecumseh
by Maurice Switzer, Chair of the Nipissing University Indigenous Council on Education (NUICE)
The legendary Tecumseh was the first North American Indian leader to attempt to unite tribes and thwart the relentless intrusion of colonial settlement. He died fighting for his cause, having been betrayed by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies.
Two centuries later the charismatic Billy Favell is elected National Chief of the Congress of First Nations, Canada's foremost Indigenous political organization.
Children’s Books
The Health Adventures of Nurse Priya: A Story About a Public Health Nurse and Her Community
by Aldona Nowak in the School of Nursing
Published: December 2025
Meet Nurse Priya, a public health nurse who works to bring health and happiness to Wellnessville. Always eager to help, she guides families, children, and teens toward healthier choices. With her knowledge and expertise, Nurse Priya unites the community, making healthy living easy and fun.
If You Go Walking
by Erin Alladin, Nipissing Alumnus, Class of 2011
Published: November 2025
Time spent in the outdoors during Fall and Winter stirs a child’s curiosity. In If You Go Walking, a thoughtful thread of questions (How do seeds know not to grow until spring?) invites young readers to explore the world around them with wonder. In nature, questions are everywhere, and answers can be too, if you know the right places to look.
Non-Fiction
Rock Star: My Life On and Off the Ice
by Jennifer Jones, Nipissing Honorary Degree Recipient (2025)
Published: August 2025
From the first slides as a toddler at her hometown Winnipeg curling club to the top step of the Olympic podium, Jennifer Jones has risen to become one of curling’s greatest players. Along the way, she has altered how the game is played and has kicked open doors to allow women to have equality in what was, traditionally, a male-dominated field.
The journey Jones shares in this memoir is one that may surprise even her biggest fans. Jones helped to grow the sport, and in exchange, she grew as a curler, a wife, a mother, and a public figure. Equal parts inspiring and shocking, Rock Star will leave readers in awe of her accomplishments and the journey that led her to become the person she is today.
Poetry
My Mother Did Not Tell Stories
by Laurie Kruk, Professor of English Studies at Nipissing University
Published: September 2012
My Mother Did Not Tell Stories challenges simplistic or sentimental maternal, familial and cultural narratives, by offering contemporary perspectives on women caught between the generations, between self and other, independence and relatedness. Encountering new environments and extended family and community ties, the women in these poems are inspired to make larger links between human, animal, cultural, geographical, political and spiritual realities.
Fridge Notes (Single Poem)
by Dr. Tiffany Roberts, Part-Time Instructor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University
This poem, with its jumbled words, missing letters, and intergenerational indentations, was inspired by the question: can frontotemporal dementia be inherited? In short, yes, there are rare hereditary forms of FTD which have been linked to abnormalities in a single gene (progranulin, tau, or C9orf72). In many instances, other neurodegenerative diseases have been identified in the families of people with FTD. It is important to note however that at present, the majority of FTD cases are deemed to be sporadic conditions.