Cody Caetano is a Canadian writer from Toronto, Ontario,[1] whose debut memoir Half-Bads in White Regalia was the winner of the Indigenous Voices Award for English prose in 2023.[2]
Caetano, of mixed Portuguese and Anishinaabe descent, studied creative writing at the University of Toronto, where he wrote the book under the mentorship of Lee Maracle.[3] The book is a memoir of his tumultuous childhood as the son of a Portuguese immigrant father and an indigenous mother from the Pinaymootang First Nation who was a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, after they moved to the hamlet of Happyland in Severn, Ontario, near Orillia.[3]
Prior to its publication, excerpts from the manuscript won the Indigenous Voices Award for unpublished English prose in 2020.[4] The book was published in 2022 by Penguin Random House Canada.[3] It was named as one of the best Canadian non-fiction books of the year by CBC Books,[5] and The Globe and Mail,[6] was named to the initial longlist for the 2023 edition of Canada Reads[7] and the 2023 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour,[8] and was a finalist for the 2023 Edna Staebler Award.[9]
In 2023 he served as writer-in-residence for the Whistler Writers Festival.[10]