Lily Gontard is a settler grateful to be living in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. She is a documentary filmmaker and a writer. Her latest short documentary film “Whalefall” was released in November 2021 and premiered in February 2022 at the Available Light Film Festival in Whitehorse, Yukon. “Whalefall” screened at seven film festivals in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe. Her current screenwriting projects include producing and co-writing the series The Ferals, writing and producing the series Gutleuthof: House of the Good and co-writing the feature film Perfect Family. She is a writer on season one of Northern Tails, a Shot in the Dark Production.
Lily’s fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in magazines such as Geist, The Puritan Magazine and Up Here. She had a novel manuscript long-listed for the 2019 Guernica Price for Literary Fiction. Her non-fiction book Beyond Mile Zero (published by Harbour Publishing from 2017 to 2022) was a collaboration with Yukon photographer Mark Kelly. BMZ won the 2017 gold Foreword Indies travel writing award and the 2018 silver IPPY travel essay award. The Yukon Historical and Museums Association awarded Lily and Mark the 2017 Yukon Heritage Award for Innovation, Education and Community Engagement Award for their work on BMZ.