Golden bee graphic. Element on Arnolda's website to represent her mom, Queen Bee.

Arnolda Dufour Bowes

BIO & HISTORY

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Vintage typewriter key - A - to start the paragraph with Arnolda

A dynamic Métis woman originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Arnolda studied creative writing with Guy Vanderhaeghe at the University of Saskatchewan. Her first book, 20.12m, is a compelling and acclaimed coming-of-age collection of stories based on her father’s childhood among the marginalized Métis Road Allowance community at Punnichy, Saskatchewan, during the late 1940s. The book received several major awards in 2022: Danuta Gleed Literary Award and $10,000 grand prize from The Writers Union of Canada and the international High Plains Award for Best Indigenous Writer. It was among SaskBooks’ best-selling titles of 2021 and won the Saskatchewan Books Indigenous Publishing Award.

Arnolda is a spirited woman on a life journey to evolve herself as the seasons change continually in her life.

She values learning new skills and living purposefully and finds writing therapeutic. Arnolda sees herself as an organic creator; she creates beauty from the smallest remnants, whether through words, music or art. Her deepest desire is using her skills to paint vivid stories that must be heard or seen.

rnolda, when not

busy with her

family or dabbling in a

new art form at their

cozy home on the

Prairies—is writing

for fun and working to

improve her craft.

Arnolda acknowledges the land on which she resides and pays respect to the ancestors of Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis.

Arnolda believes we must find balance in health in all four aspects of life — physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. She loves music, books, nature, fitness and her family. And she hopes her life exemplifies courage and inspires others to voyage bravely further than they imagined.

The two quotations that speak most profoundly to her heart and life are:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

~ Marianne Williamson

“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.”

~ The Bee Movie, 2007