{"id":16171,"date":"2025-07-22T19:29:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T19:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/16171\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T19:29:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T19:29:12","slug":"usask-mfa-in-writing-graduate-lands-three-book-deal-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/16171\/","title":{"rendered":"USask MFA in writing graduate lands three-book deal – News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent graduate of the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program is seeing her dream of being a fantasy novelist become reality.<\/p>\n

Tonia Laird (MFA\u201920), who lives in Saskatoon, has signed a three-book deal with Simon & Schuster Canada for a new supernatural dystopian young adult series titled\u00a0The Kin Trilogy. The debut book in the series will launch in fall 2026 as one of the first titles from Simon & Schuster\u2019s new children\u2019s publishing program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think mostly I was just really shocked by (the news), but very excited too, because I was just moving out of working in video games and trying to get established as a novelist, and it seemed like perfect timing,\u201d said Laird,\u00a0who has previously written for video game companies<\/a>\u00a0such as BioWare and Thought Pennies.<\/p>\n

The first, currently untitled, book in Laird\u2019s new trilogy will follow a young M\u00e9tis woman on a journey to find answers about her mysterious past. Accompanied by a black dog that only she can see, she travels through a future dystopian version of Saskatchewan in which everything is run by corporations.<\/p>\n

The story draws on Laird\u2019s own experiences with reconnecting with her M\u00e9tis heritage over the past two decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s been a very slow process, but I think it’s been the right one,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing able to connect with other storytellers was my first big step into M\u00e9tis culture and now I’m more active in the (Gabriel Dumont) Local #11.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kin Trilogy\u00a0will be steeped in both M\u00e9tis and settler folklore. Setting the first book in Saskatchewan was also important to Laird, who is originally from the area of Davidson, Sask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent graduate of the University of Saskatchewan (USask) Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program is seeing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-16171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}