Amanda Peters Books In Order

Publication Order of AmandaPeters Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Amanda Peters is a mixed-race author of European and Mi’kmaq ancestry who is a native of the Nova Scotian, Annapolis Valley. She usually makes use of her mixed-race heritage as inspiration for many of her novels.

In 2022, Amanda went to the New Mexico-based Institute of American Indians Arts where she got a creative writing MFA. Earlier on, “Waiting for the Long Night Moon,” her short fiction work had been the winner of the Indigenous Voices Award.
In 2021, Katherena Vermette the Metis novelist and poet invited her to the “Rising Stars Program” by the Writers Trust of Canada.

Amanda’s nonfiction and short fiction works have also been published in Filling Station Magazine, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and Grain Magazine.

“The Berry Pickers” which was her debut novel was published in 2023 and was soon after shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Discover Prize by Barnes and Noble, and the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Outside of her writing, Amanda Peters is a teacher, mentor, auntie, woman, sister, daughter, friend, and descendant of a Revolutionary War sailor. She is also a Canadian teller of stories, a traveler, a reader of books, a wine drinker, a listener of old country and jazz, and an admirer of stained glass.

She now teaches creative writing at “Acadia,” which she says is living the dream since she has always wanted to one day teach. Moreover, there is nothing she loves more than teaching the literary canon with complete freedom, particularly to women of color and Indigenous women.
During her first semester teaching at Acadia, she was known for teaching “Writing and Reading Critically” which was a required course.

She would then teach a creative writing workshop and became a mentor to aspiring authors which she loves to do, to give back since other people helped her become who she is.

Some of the people who have been instrumental in mentoring Amanda Peters include Christy Ann Conlin and Stephanie Domet, in addition to many other women writers and her classmates who reviewed her early work.

Amanda Peters’ very popular novel “The Berry Pickers” found its inspiration in the many stories her father used to tell her about his childhood.

When he was young, his family used to head to the fields of Maine to pick berries where they had good times with fights, laughs, and even ghosts.

When her father discovered that she was doing an MFA, he encouraged her to write about the berry pickers of Mi’kmaq, even though she tried to tell him that she did not write nonfiction.

In the summer of 2017, she got in the car with her father and headed to Maine. Back in his hometown, he showed her where they used to swim in the lake, where they got their supplies, and where they picked the berries.

Since she found all his stories fascinating, she took notes and it is from her notes that the story began to form in her head. While the novel is fiction, it found its inspiration from her father’s crazy stories.

She was also lucky that she went to the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) for her MFA. At IAIA, she got to work with some remarkable classmates and mentors who offered much-needed attention and advice that made the book what it is.

“The Berry Pickers” by Amanda Peters is a work set in the early 1960s where Ruthie is the four-year-old and youngest daughter of a Nova Scotian Mi’kmaq family.

The kid goes missing from a blueberry field where her family was working in the summer and since their status is transient, they have hardly any legal help from the authorities.

Joe her six-year-old brother was the last person who saw Ruthie and he was haunted by the disappearance for years to come. Heartbroken and devastated, the family struggles to hold on to the fading hope that Ruthie is alive somewhere and will come back home one day.
Meanwhile, Norma retains vague memories of her life before she turned five where she grew up in Maine. She was the kid of an overprotective mother and a father who was a tad distant and worked as a judge.

She was a perceptive and inquisitive child and remembers the hushed conversations between family members and the nervous reaction from her mother when she asked about their family.

She is certain that there are a lot of things about her that do not feel right and this goes on right into adulthood.

Years later, after both her father and mother are deceased, her aunt finally tells her the truth about their family. It is a bombshell that leaves the fifty-four-year-old Norma with a lot of questions about who she really is.

Amanda Peters’ “Waiting for the Long Night Moon” is her debut collection of short stories. In this work, she describes the Indigenous experience from a broad-ranging spectrum of place and time.
She starts from contact with the first settlers from Europe to the forced abduction of Indigenous kids to the present-day fights for the right to water resources.

It is an intimate collection in which the author combines spare, beautiful prose with traditional storytelling to tell of how dignified the traditional way of life is, the resilience and endurance of Indigenous people, and the humiliations of systemic racism.
There is a youth who comes back from residential school and realizes that communication with his parents is impossible. In another story, a young woman finds healing and purpose on the front lines as a water protector.

In one of my best stories, a young girl dances her first Mawi’omi with the usual nervousness of a first time while an old man reminisces over his long life. The collection also comes with “The Berry Pickers” in the form of a short story that would inspire the long-form novel of the same name.

At times disturbing and sometimes sad, it is nevertheless a story that will always remind you that whenever there is grief there is also joy, and whenever there is trauma you can oftentimes find resilience and power.