Monique Gray Smith is a Canadian writer of children's and young adult literature.
Of Cree, Lakota and Scottish descent, Smith is based in Victoria, British Columbia.
[2][3] She is most noted for her young adult novel Tilly, a Story of Hope and Resilience, which won the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature in 2014,[4] and her children's picture book My Heart Fills With Happiness, which won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize in 2017.
In 2018 she was named as a finalist for the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award for Speaking Our Truth: A Journey of Reconciliation,[5] and for the Burt Award for The Journey Forward, a compilation of two novellas co-written with Richard Van Camp.
[7] In addition to her work as a writer, Smith has worked as a psychiatric nurse in Indigenous communities for over 25 years, having completed formal nurses training at Douglas College.