Jo-Ann is Director of the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre, a partnership between the University of Regina, University of Saskatchewan, and First Nations University. She is also Associate Faculty in Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina and in the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests include Indigenous Literature as applied literatures, narrative medicine, narrative policy studies, and trauma studies. She is an active researcher and Co-Principal Investigator on several Operating Grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Nominated Principal Investigator for a team awarded a Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation Health Research Group Grant for their research project Iyiniw-Iskâtisak Pamihisowak: Using Indigenous Knowledge for a Healthier Aboriginal Youth. Jo-Ann’s book Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing (2009) won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Scholarly Writing in 2009 and the First Peoples Writing Award in 2010. This year, Canadian Literature, Canada’s prestigious literary journal, awarded the prize for the best essay of 2013 to “Thinking Together: A Forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy and Healing.” Jo-Ann is also a member of the Boards of Directors of the Aboriginal Health Research Network, the Lung Association of Saskatchewan, and the newly-established Lung Health Institute of Canada, the University of Regina Press, and the Indigenous Literary Studies Association. Jo-Ann is also a member of the Regina Riel Métis Council and lives Regina with her husband Clayton and one of their many grandchildren.