A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Winner of the 2026 Tadeusz Bradecki Prize
Finalist for the 2026 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction
Finalist for the 2026 Pen/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
Finalist for the 2026 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
Finalist for the 2026 Washington State Book Awards
Shortlisted for an American Booksellers Association Indies Choice Book Award

"Written in gorgeous, sparse prose, We Survived the Night reads like a novel. Told with a blistering honesty, the truth and grit create a beautifully woven coyote story we haven’t heard before. This is a love letter to Oakland, to the Canim Lake Band Tsq'secen of the Secwepemc Nation, to a father from his son, to the act of being a Native person in the twenty-first century finding ways to love even through all that wounds have opened and wrought. With this, Julian Brave NoiseCat has written a book I’ve been waiting my whole life to read." —Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars

"Thoughtful, informative, often entertaining and just as often saddening, NoiseCat’s is a book to remember." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“NoiseCat gives readers the gift of his first book, a mash-up of memoir, journalism, and folktales. . . . All of it adds up to beautiful storytelling.” —Booklist (starred review)

"A kaleidoscopic exploration of identity, family, community, and the rich cultures of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. . . . tender and thoughtful. . . . Noisecat manages to entertain and inform in equal measure. Every tale, whether myth or history, is imbued with a beautiful honesty that will surely move readers. A genre-bending work of nonfiction written with immaculate composure." —Library Journal (starred review)

"This book grabs your heart and doesn't let go. Julian Brave NoiseCat has written an immensely powerful, loving, lyrical story of how the profound search to understand our foundations, to know our ancestors, our communities and those closest to us, shapes and influences who we are and the path we walk on. Julian seamlessly weaves the present and past together, as he tells a beautiful, fearless, origin story, his own—the son of the coyote." —Tanya Talaga, author of The Knowing and Seven Fallen Feathers

“Julian Brave NoiseCat’s We Survived the Night enters the foray of nonfiction informed by the ancestral stories of his epistemologies. In bold, sweeping stories that coalesce temporalities and oralities into a singular throughline, We Survived the Night details the aftermath of residential and boarding schools while never succumbing fully to the expectation of unparalleled pain often called for from Indigenous memoirs on Turtle Island. Alongside his investigations into historical and contemporary colonial legacies, NoiseCat foregrounds joy, lyricism and Sécwepemc coyote stories to detail futurities for and of survivors and architects of Indigenous tomorrows.” —2026 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Jury citation

"If you saw Sugarcane, you already know Julian Brave Noisecat is a brilliant storyteller. We Survived the Night plumbs years of reportage, research and personal family history to tell a compelling, educational and deeply moving portrait of contemporary Indigenous life. Told with the help of Coyote, this is a powerful work from an important young voice.” —Orion Magazine

"Julian Brave NoiseCat seamlessly connects true tales of identity and betrayal, love and abandonment, clarity and confusion. We Survived the Night is a whirling, radiant gift to the reader." —Louise Erdrich, author of The Night Watchman

"Invigorating and soul-stirring, We Survived the Night is a book whose epic scale—encompassing explorations of history, language, land, and politics, as well as family bonds, artmaking, and storytelling—astonishes me. It is a tribute, in the end, to love that is intimate and clear-eyed enough to see one’s own father and mother, and capacious enough to hold the whole world." —Megha Majumdar, author of A Guardian and a Thief

"We Survived the Night is filled with that thing I look for in all great art—love deepened by sorrow, sorrow widened by love. Survival, yes. NoiseCat is one of our great new Scheherazades—he keeps people alive in his stories. And people will want to stay alive because of them." —Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

"This powerful book is a journey by torchlight through Julian’s own family story, and the torches are Coyote Stories and broader histories of Indigenous North America. . . . It’s a beautiful, wrenching, important masterpiece, both a memoir and something that reaches far beyond the personal." —Rebecca Solnit, author of No Straight Road Takes You There

"Part love story and story of self-discovery—this gorgeously written, deeply courageous mini epic by Julian Brave NoiseCat is an essential guide to waking up in our new yet ancient human emergency. It’s not easy. It’s not always possible. But We Survived the Night is the book we need to read right now if we hope to survive this night." —Jorie Graham, author of To 2040