Joanna Cockerline
AUTHOR
Joanna Cockerline is a CBC Literary Awards prizewinner whose novel Still will be released in Autumn 2025 with The Porcupine’s Quill.
The book's publication will be followed by a national and international book tour.
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Joanna has published in national and international journals and magazines such as Room, The Fiddlehead, En Route, and International Human Rights Arts. She co-authored the short story collection Seeing Our Sisters in 2024.
Beyond being a prizewinner in the CBC Literary Awards, Joanna's writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Joanna earned her BA and MA in Literature at the University of Guelph and completed the Graduate Program at the Humber School for Writers with Booker Prize winner Peter Carey.
Joanna lives with her family in the ancestral, unceded Syilx Okanagan Territory of Kelowna, BC, where she has co-founded a street outreach.
She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Okanagan.
Joanna Cockerline is represented by the Bukowski Agency.
Books
Still: A Novel
The Porcupine’s Quill, forthcoming September 2025
Still is the story of Kayla, who is living and working on the streets of Kelowna, BC, Canada, and of Little Zoe, a woman in the sex trade who is missing. Set in a vibrant and diverse community of people living on the streets, the novel explores sex work, living unhoused, the opioid crisis, friendship, what it means to survive, and what it means to find a home—especially within one’s self.
As Kayla—whose past is darker than she tells—searches for her missing friend, she also uncovers much about her own life.
The novel delves into both the pain and resiliency of childhood, with flashbacks to Kayla's past with horses and how she came to be on the streets. Kayla also becomes friends with an outreach worker whose outwardly picture-perfect life belies her struggles with postpartum depression, alcohol abuse, and bipolar, and who yearns to rediscover her passion for photography and share its magic with Kayla.
The narrative considers what home means, how different forms of community are possible, and how we can tell the stories that are ourselves.
Still asks questions about what it means to be missing and what we can—and cannot—go back to. Ultimately, Still is a story of community, friendship, resilience, and hope.
Author proceeds from Still will be donated to street outreach and community programs.
Limlimpt (Thank You) to Syilx Artist Sheldon Pierre Louis
The mural - "'kwu mrimstn - We are Medicine" in Joanna's photograph above, created by syilx (okanagan) artist Sheldon Pierre Louis, is on the side of Kelowna's Gospel Mission Shelter on Leon Avenue, the street where much of the action in Still takes place.
Limlimpt and much appreciation to Sheldon, who resides at sənƛ̓uxuxtan (place where the grizzly bear killed them) on the Okanagan Indian Reserve IR#1 near Vernon, BC. Sheldon is the lead visual artist for Kama? Creative Aboriginal Arts Collective and a current sitting board member for the Greater Vernon Museum & Archives and a former board member of the Arts Council of the North Okanagan. Sheldon spent the last six years as a member of Okanagan Indian Band Chief and Council, and now works as a full-time artist.
Scroll further for reviews of Still, as well as more about Seeing Our Sisters, co-authored by Joanna, plus information on events, updates, and how to contact Joanna.
Reviews
"Evocative and unforgettable,
Still holds a light up to the street life
we so often neglect, showing us the people, their dreams,
their challenges, and their humanity with compassion and hope.
Yet it celebrates so much more, such as friendship, the transformative power of art, and self empowerment...
all told through a vivid, poetic, and evocative style that stays with you long after you put down the book."
- Munira Hussein,
Africa Writing Prize shortlisted author of A Curve of Darkness
"Suffused with tenderness, Still celebrates and uplifts the marginalized...
Joanna Cockerline's writing is richly observed, compassionate, and brimming with beauty."
- Kevin Chong,
Giller Prize shortlisted author of
The Double Life of Benson Yu
"Joanna Cockerline's Still holds the kinds of stories that most people walk past every day without much thought: people living with addiction, street-involved youth, workers in the sex industry, and all the cruelties that lead people to make the hard choices many of us have been lucky to dodge. Cockerline tells these stories from the inside - a novel grown from within those communities -
rather than with the typical Hollywood glamour.
Still is a deeply-observed novel, full of practical hope, with characters who are gorgeous, familiar, and true."
- Michael V. Smith,
author of Cumberland and Progress
"Still explores the journey of the underdog, and life on the streets and sex work--realities I have known--with honesty, love, and integrity.
From survival to strength, these words ring true, the characters breathe with life, and this compelling story is told with heart...
An incredible book."
- T.S., Community Activist
"Still paints a multi-layered portrait of the ways in which people who live in tents and parks and alleys - wounded people who look out for each other and show up for each other - constitute a family.
Open-eyed and compassionate, the novel glows with respect for those community bonds. Kayla is the perfect guide and a great character in her own right, with the fear and pain she's running from coiled inside her determination to find her friend.
This novel is a signal achievement."
- Anne Fleming,
Giller Prize shortlisted author of Curiosities
Seeing Our Sisters:
An Anthology of Short Stories
By The Girlship Collective:
Rehema Zuberi (ResH), Munira Hussein, Joanna Cockerline, Ellah Hallets, Hellen Mwololo, Jacque Nzioka (TJ)
From the Introduction:
“Beloved community is not formed by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in this world.”
- bell hooks
“In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.”
- Audre Lorde
“There is no intimacy like that between… women who have chosen to be sisters.”
- Warsan Shire
Seeing Our Sisters is a short story anthology by authors from Kenya and Canada. The book was born out of a beloved community, a desire to empower, sisterhood, a belief in the power of story, and what we can do when we come together.
This collection of ten stories, written by a collective of women whose experiences transcend borders—international, demographic, and those societal expectations try to impose—is a celebration of diverse voices.
United by our friendship, our love of storytelling, and our insistence that a spectrum of perspectives and experiences—including those that may be marginalized or formerly unheard—must be shared, this anthology honours both the differences and connections that comprise who we are and how we exist in the world.
We hope the sharing of these voices is not only a celebration, but also an invitation: an invitation to think, to learn, and to grow—an invitation to all who want to share their stories, share their truths, and make a difference to this interconnected world of which we are all a part.
"The latest literary sensation...
The entire project is a testament to women's creativity and collaboration...
A powerful collection."
- Gilbert Mwangi, The Nairobian
Events:
Readings, Literary Festivals, Workshops, Book Club Visits, and Speaking Engagements
With the release of Still in Autumn 2025, Joanna will embark on a national book tour of readings and literary festivals across Canada. In response to the current political situation, she has cancelled her US tour for 2026 and will now focus on even more Canadian and overseas locales. She is eager to connect with Canadians across the country and welcomes your suggestions for book tour readings and events -- from cities to small towns in all provinces and territories, she would like to make it happen!
Joanna loves delivering readings, workshops, presentations, and community talks, and looks forward to book club visits.
She has been chosen as a reader at major literary festivals and events, the national keynote speaker for communications and community-building events across the country, and has shared her insights in numerous interviews, such as with CBC Radio.
For more on booking a reading, event, workshop, book club visit, or Joanna’s participation in a literary festival, please feel welcome to get in touch.
