Filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers brings rural Alberta authenticity to Canada Reads
Canada Reads will air April 13-16 on CBC TV, CBC Radio and CBC Books
Filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is championing A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt on Canada Reads 2026!
On Canada Reads, five Canadian celebrities each pick one book that the whole country should read. They debate their choices over the course of four days, voting to eliminate one every day. The last book standing is the winner.
This year's edition will take place on April 13-16. The show’s theme is one book to build bridges.
The Canada Reads 2026 contenders are:
- Filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers champions A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
- Hockey YouTube personality and podcaster Steve “Dangle” Glynn champions Searching for Terry Punchout by Tyler Hellard
- Musician and writer Tegan Quin champions The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor
- Broadway actor and kids TV host Josh Dela Cruz champions Foe by Iain Reid
- BookTok star Morgann Book champions It's Different This Time by Joss Richard
The Canada Reads 2026 debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will broadcast each day at 10 a.m. (11 a.m. AT, 1:30 p.m. NT) on CBC Radio, with a live audio stream and podcast recap on CBC Listen. Watch live at 10 a.m. ET/ 7 a.m. PT on CBC Gem, CBCbooks.ca and YouTube, or at 1 p.m. (2 p.m. AT, 2:30 p.m. NT) on CBC TV.
You can tune in live or catch a replay on the platform of your choice.
A storyteller across platforms
Tailfeathers is a writer, director, producer and actor. She is a member of the Kainai First Nation (Blackfoot Confederacy) and is Sámi from Uŋárja (Nesseby, Norway).
Her feature directorial debut was The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, co-written with Kathleen Hepburn, which tells the story of a chance encounter between two Indigenous women of different circumstances, and garnered critical acclaim.
Also among her award-winning work is her documentary Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy, about the fight against the opioid crisis in the Kainai First Nation, and her direction of the limited series Little Bird from Jennifer Podemski and Hannah Moscovitch.
She’s had success as an actor as well, winning Canadian Screen Awards for her performances in Danis Goulet's Night Raiders and Rachel Talalay’s On the Farm. Her other acting credits include Three Pines, the television show based on Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series and Sterling Point, the upcoming series from Megan Park.
Books are a constant companion
Currently based in Winnipeg, Tailfeathers moved around a lot growing up. By the time she graduated high school, she attended 11 different schools in Norway, Canada and the U.S.
“I was frequently the new kid and had to find ways to connect with my classmates and make friends,” she told CBC Books in an interview.
Books were a way into conversation — but also a balm for loneliness, which has carried over to her adult life.
“Books are always a place of comfort when I'm alone, which is like probably half of my life,” she said.
Now, as an actor, writer and director, she’s often on the road, spending time alone in hotel rooms, towns and cities far from home. That explains why she can often be found with a stack of books by her night table.
“It's not only something that's kept me company in dark times or times when I felt alone, but it's also been a place of inspiration,” she said.
“As an artist myself, I find that when I read work, be it poetry or fiction or even nonfiction, it's a place where I'm able to draw inspiration from others and remember why it is that I create and remind myself of what makes us all human.”
Tailfeathers has also voiced audiobooks, including real ones by katherena vermette, A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter and Empty Spaces by Jordan Abel, a dream she’s held since listening to books on tape in the second grade.
“There was something so compelling about the notion of reading audio books,” she said.
“It's such a meditative and beautiful thing to sit in a sound studio and just read a book. It forces you to be present with the book in a way that just sitting and passively reading doesn't.”
A novel from an adored author
Her pick for Canada Reads is the novel A Minor Chorus by author Billy-Ray Belcourt, who is from Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta.
Now based in Vancouver, Belcourt is someone Tailfeathers has always admired; so much so that the title of her feature film, The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open, is borrowed from the author’s essay of the same name.
A Minor Chorus follows an unnamed narrator who abandons his grad school thesis to write a novel. He returns to his hometown in northern Alberta, where he has a series of intimate and personal conversations, bringing modern queer and Cree experiences into focus, and gathering the building blocks for his book.
“I read it when it was first published and, like all of [Belcourt’s] work, found it deeply moving. It spoke to my heart and spirit on a level that books rarely do,” said Tailfeathers.
Belcourt, an academic and writer, is also known for his poetry collection, This Wound is a World, which won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, his memoir, A History of My Brief Body, which was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction, and his short story collection Coexistence.
A connection to rural Alberta
A Minor Chorus is an exploration of the emotional texture of life around where Belcourt grew up, he told CBC Books in an email.
“I was compelled to depict the kinds of people and lived experiences specific to that region,” he said. “I wanted not to write about a singular character but a whole cast — or chorus — so that I could speak to an array of histories. I wanted, ultimately, to fill a gap in the literary landscape in Canada.”
His depiction of rural Alberta and Indigenous life there was one of the key aspects that drew in Tailfeathers, who’s Blackfoot from the Kainai First Nation in southern Alberta.
“I feel kinship to the way that Billy-Ray writes about rural Alberta and the divisions across all of the identity markers that make us who we are,” she said.
“I felt like that book is just such a beautiful way of speaking across the divide.”
For her, the novel captures the nuance of feeling both comfortable and unsafe in a place that’s home.
“It's a complex thing to be in your homelands and feel a deep love and sense of belonging to that place but also feel this ever-present hostility towards us as Indigenous people in our homeland.”
Tailfeathers was moved by the book’s portrayal of this dissonance, but also how the novel offers a sense of hope through the power of connection and conversation.
In a world that often feels divided, a book that leaves room for openness, is exactly what we need, said Tailfeathers.
“It's a reminder that we have to speak to each other across the divide. We have to have real conversations with people who might not come from the same background as us and have an understanding and an acceptance of others,” she said.
“A Minor Chorus was this beautiful retreat in words to my own heart and humanity and spirit.”
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