Deni Ellis Bechard

Deni Ellis Bechard is the author of Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book); Of Bonobos and Men (Grand Prize winner of the Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism); Cures for Hunger, a memor about his bank robber father (selected as one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for literary fiction, selected by CBC Radio Canada as one of 2017's Incontournables and one of the most important books of the year to be read by Canada's political leaders); Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation, an epistolary book of young-adult non-fiction co-authored with Innu poet Natasha Kanape Fontaine; White, a novel exploring the legacy of colonialism and the impact of neocolonialism in the Congo and in Canada; A Song from Faraway (2020), a novel that tells the story of a family's legacy in wars over two centuries and on three continents; and We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine (2025), a speculative novel exploring artificial intelligence and the meaning of human existence.

He has reported from India, Cuba, Rwanda, Colombia, Iraq, the Congo, and Afghanistan. He has been a finalist for a Canadian National Magazine Award and has been featured in Best Canadian Essays 2017, and his photojournalism has been exhibited in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.