Hope Matters, written by multiple award-winner Lee Maracle, in collaboration with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter, focuses on the journey of Indigenous people from colonial beginnings to reconciliation.

Maracle states that the book, "is also about the journey of myself and my two daughters." During their youth, Bobb and Carter wrote poetry with their mother, and eventually they all decided that one day they would write a book together. This book is the result of that dream.

Written collaboratively by all three women, the poems in Hope Matters blend their voices together into a shared song of hope and reconciliation.

Lee Maracle is a member of the Sto:Lo nation. She was born in Vancouver and grew up on the North Shore. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ravensong and Daughters Are Forever. Her novel for young adults, Will’s Garden was well-received and is taught in schools. She has also published on book of poetry, Bent Box, and a work of creative non-fiction, I Am Woman. She is the co-editor of a number of anthologies, including the award winning anthology My Home As I Remember and Telling It: Women and Language across Culture. Her work has been published in anthologies and scholarly journals worldwide. The mother of four and grandmother of seven, Maracle is currently an instructor at the University of Toronto, the Traditional Teacher for First Nation’s House, and instructor with the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and the S.A.G.E. (Support for Aboriginal Graduate Education). She is also a writing instructor at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

In 2009, Maracle received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University. Maracle recently received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work promoting writing among Aboriginal Youth, and is 2014 finalist for the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Maracle has served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Washington.

Lee Maracle's profile page

Columpa Bobb has worked as a producer, director, playwright and performer for over 30 years. She is the recipient of a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Best Actress for the lead role in The Ecstasy of Rita Joe; she was also nominated for Jessie Awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actress and Best Ensemble Cast for her work in Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth (Firehall Arts Centre). She was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Actress for Sixty BelowJumping Mouse, co-written with Marion deVries. Columpa was also nominated for a Returning the Gift Award for Contributions to North American Native Writing. For more than a decade Columpa ran Canada's largest and most extensive empowerment through the arts training program for Indigenous youth in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which culminated in the creation of Urban Indigenous Theatre Company, Manitoba's only professional theatre organization by and for Indigenous people.

Columpa Bobb's profile page

Vanvouver-born Tania Carter is an actor, playwright and poet. She is a member of the Sto:lo Nation. Hope Matters is a poetry book co-writtten by Carter, her sister Columpa Bobb, and their mother acclaimed author and activist Lee Maracle. After living for twenty years in Toronto, she now lives in Vancouver.

Tania Carter's profile page

“The writing confronts the reader with the ugly, violent truth and traumatic wounds of colonization, racism, and sexism as inescapably as generations of women have had to face and endure them in their everyday lives. Yet the poetry is a colourful celebration of women’s strength, resilience, and power of love that testifies to their determined efforts to make their families, communities, and nations survive and thrive.” —Canadian Literature