NWT Arts

CBC North recruited Patti-Kay Hamilton from the trapline in 1980 to cover a dog race. That opened the door to a thirty-year career as a radio journalist. She was a member of the team that won the Gabriel award in 1985 for a documentary on suicide. After retiring in 2012 Hamilton took up a more creative pen. Magazines and the first anthology of northern writing published her stories. In 2014 Hamilton won Canada Writes, out of 1800 entries from across the country, for The Hunter and The Swan.She is the first writer from all three territories to win the prize. Magazines in France have since translated and published her work. She has twice been a finalist in the Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story award. In 2017 Canada Writes selected her story Stampeded for the long list. In 2018 Hamilton provided writing support for a book on the 1968 Landslide in Fort Smith. That book sold out in one week. Hamilton enthusiastically participates in community and regional storytelling festivals. In her spare time she volunteers as a mentor for novice writers. Trapline to Deadline, Hamilton's first book, will be available in December 2018. It is a collection of stories about 30 years of adventures with CBC North.

She is working on a second collection of short fiction and a novel based in Wood Buffalo National Park.

Patti-Kay Hamilton lives in Fort Smith NWT.