Writing Creative Writing: Essays from the Field - Rishma Dunlop, Daniel Scott Tysdal, Priscila Uppal 2016

Contributor biographies

Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (Coach House, 2001) — a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Poetry Prize. Bök is one of the earliest founders of Conceptual Literature (the poetic school of avant-garde writing made famous, in part, by the performance of its ringleader, Kenneth Goldsmith, at the White House in 2011). Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has earned many accolades for his virtuoso recitals of “sound-poems” (particularly Die Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters), and he has performed lectures and readings at more than two hundred venues around the world in the last four years. Bök is on the verge of finishing his current project, entitled The Xenotext — a work that requires him to engineer the genome of an unkillable bacterium so that the DNA of such an organism might become not only a durable archive that stores a poem for eternity, but also an operant machine that writes a poem in response. Bök teaches in the Department of Literary Studies at Charles Darwin University.

Stephanie Bolster is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award; an excerpt from her current manuscript, Long Exposure, was a finalist for the 2012 CBC Poetry Prize. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, which began as her MFA thesis at UBC, won the Governor General’s and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she teaches in the creative writing program at Concordia University in Montreal.

Catherine Bush is the author of four novels, Accusation (2013), Claire’s Head (2004), The Rules of Engagement (2000), and Minus Time (1993). Her novels have been published internationally and short-listed for literary awards. Bush’s non-fiction has appeared in publications including the Globe and Mail, the New York Times Magazine, the literary magazine Brick, and the anthology The Heart Does Break. Bush has a degree in comparative literature from Yale University, has held a variety of writer-in-residence positions, and has taught creative writing at universities including Concordia, the University of Florida, the University of Guelph, and in the University of British Columbia’s low-residency MFA. She lives in Toronto and is the coordinator of the creative writing MFA at the University of Guelph. More info is available at www.catherinebush.com.

Louis Cabri is anti-author of the anti-poetry books Posh Lust (New Star), Poetryworld (CUE), and The Mood Embosser (Coach House). He is currently writing two anti-translation projects based on poetry by Marc-Antoine Girard, Sieur de Saint-Amant, and Théodore de Banville. Editing projects include The False Laws of Narrative: The Poetry of Fred Wah (Wilfrid Laurier UP); a feature on poetry and sound for ESC: English Studies in Canada, with Peter Quartermain; PhillyTalks, a poets’ dialogue series, with Aaron Levy; hole magazine and various books, with Rob Manery; and two Open Letter double issues of letters to/from poets, with Nicole Markotić. He writes on modern and contemporary poetry, recently completing longish essays on the work of Ted Greenwald and Catriona Strang. He teaches poetry (and anti-poetry) at the University of Windsor.

Wanda Campbell teaches creative writing and women’s literature at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She has published a novel, Hat Girl, and five collections of poetry, Sky Fishing, Looking for Lucy, Grace, Daedalus Had a Daughter, and Kalamkari and Cordillera. She has also edited Literature: A Pocket Anthology and Hidden Rooms: Early Canadian Women Poets, and her articles have appeared in several of the Reappraisals of Canadian Writers Series (U of Ottawa P) and in academic journals, including Canadian Literature, Canadian Poetry, Essays in Canadian Writing, Mosaic, and Studies in Canadian Literature.

Jennifer Duncan is the author of Sanctuary & Other Stories and Frontier Spirit: Brave Women of the Klondike. She was one of the two key designers of the original Yukon School of Art curriculum and has been teaching writing for twenty years, for the last decade in the York University creative writing program. She has a BA in English and creative writing from York University, a BEd from OISE/University of Toronto, and an MA in English/creative ­writing from Concordia University. Currently, she is completing her ­dissertation on creative writing pedagogy for York’s language, culture and teaching doctoral program while in the final stages of revising her first novel.

Lorri Neilsen Glenn is the author and editor of fourteen collections of poetry, scholarly research, and creative non-fiction, including Following the River: Traces of Red River Women (2017), the acclaimed bricolage memoir Threading Light (2011), and the anthology Untying the Apron: Daughters Remember Mothers of the 50s (2013). Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have earned several national and international awards. A former Halifax Poet Laureate, she is the recipient of Halifax’s Woman of Excellence Award for her work in the arts and a Research Excellence Award from Mount Saint Vincent University (where she is professor emerita). She has taught creative writing for thirty years across Canada and in Europe, Chile, and Australia. She serves as a mentor in the MFA program in creative non-fiction at the University of King’s College in Halifax.

David B. Goldstein is a critic, poet, and food writer, and an associate professor at York University. He has published two poetry collections, Lost Originals (2016) and Laws of Rest (2013), and several chapbooks. His first scholarly monograph, Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England, shared the 2014 biennial Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award. He has co-edited two essay collections devoted to Shakespeare, and writes essays on early modern literature, Emmanuel Levinas, food studies, ecology, and contemporary poetry.

Gülayşe Koçak is a Turkish writer living in Istanbul who grew up in the U.S., Ethiopia, Denmark, Germany, and Turkey. She has been conducting creative writing workshops since 2004. Apart from translations, book reviews, and essays, she has four novels: Beyond the Double Doors (YKY, 1993), How Can I Cure the Sadness in her Eyes? (YKY, 1997), Top (YKY, 2002), and Black Scent (YKY, 2012), the last two of which are dystopian. She also has a book of personal essays, Don’t Say She Didn’t (Alfa, 2017). Her experiences teaching participants varying from university students to prison guards moved her to write The Pleasures of Creative Writing (Alfa, 2013), which is about the challenges of teaching creative writing to participants with an educational background of rote learning, who were raised with taboos, and who haven’t internalized freedom of expression. In it she shares the methods that were successful in overcoming these and other cultural barriers. Since 2006, Koçak has been travelling to under­privileged parts of Turkey to encourage creative and critical thinking and writing and to raise gender awareness in schools and with local decision-makers.

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is a PhD candidate in the English department at the University of Toronto. She has taught creative writing at Colorado College, the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, the New York Times Knowledge Network, and Ryerson University’s Chang School. She is the bestselling author of the novels All the Broken Things, Perfecting, The Nettle Spinner, as well as the short story collection, Way Up. Her books have been nominated for the First Novel Award, the Toronto Book Award, the ReLit Prize, and Canada Reads, and have won a Danuta Gleed Award. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Granta Magazine, the Walrus, the Lifted Brow, Maclean’s magazine, 7X7, and Storyville, where she won the inaugural Sidney Prize. Kathryn has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Corporation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is associate faculty with the creative writing MFA at the University of Guelph. For more information please visit www.kathrynkuitenbrouwer.com.

Kathy Mac (a.k.a. Dr. Kathleen McConnell) has published a book of poetic essays (or perhaps didactic poems), Pain, Porn and Complicity: Women Heroes from Pygmalion to Twilight (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013), and three books of poems: Human Misunderstanding (Roseway, 2017), The Hundefräulein Papers (Roseway, 2009), and Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth (Roseway, 2002, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and winner of the Gerald Lampert Award). She teaches at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Nicole Markotić is a novelist, critic, and poet published in literary journals in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe. Her books include four of poetry (including the latest, Whelmed, with Coach House), three novels (including the latest, Rough Patch, a YA novel with Arsenal Pulp Press), a critical collection of essays (Disability in Film and Literature, with McFarland & Co.), and several edited books (including the latest, Robert Kroetsch: Essays on His Works, with Guernica). She edits the chapbook series Wrinkle Press, and has worked as a book editor for various presses, currently on the NeWest literary board as one of its fiction editors. She teaches creative writing, Canadian literature, children’s literature, and disability studies at the University of Windsor.

Lori A. May is the author of several books, including The Write Crowd: Literary Citizenship & the Writing Life (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is a frequent guest speaker at writing conferences and teaches in the creative non-fiction MFA program at the University of King’s College in Halifax. May writes across the genres, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Writer’s Digest, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. More information is available online at www.loriamay.com.

Suzette Mayr is the author of four novels, including her most recent book, Monoceros, which won the ReLit and W.O. Mitchell Awards, and was nominated for the 2011 Giller Prize, the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction, and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. Her novel The Widows was a finalist for the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Caribbean region. She is a former president of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, and she teaches creative writing at the University of Calgary.

Yvette Nolan is a playwright, dramaturge, and director. Her plays include Annie Mae’s Movement, BLADE, Job’s Wife, Ham and the Ram, Scattering Jake, The Birds (a modern adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy), and The Unplugging, which won the 2012 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script. From 2003 to 2011 she served as the artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto. Medicine Shows, a book about Native theatre in Canada, was published in 2015.

Mary Schendlinger is a writer, illustrator, editor, publisher, and retired teacher and author of Prepare To Be Amazed: The Geniuses of Modern Magic, Power Parenting Your Teenager, and many shorter articles. Writing as Eve Corbel, she is the author of more than fifty comics published in periodicals and anthologies. She taught writing for graphic forms at the University of British Columbia and was a member of the faculty for the Master of Publishing program at Simon Fraser University. She is also co-founder and former senior editor of Geist magazine, a literary and cultural quarterly.

Andrea Thompson is a writer, spoken word artist, and educator who has performed her poetry across the country for over twenty years. In 1995 she was featured in the documentary Slamnation as a member of the country’s first national slam team, and in 2005, her CD One was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award. She is the author of the novel Over Our Heads and co-editor of the anthology Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out. A graduate of the University of Guelph’s MFA creative ­writing program, Thompson currently teaches fiction at Brock University and spoken word in the continuing studies departments of the Ontario College of Art and Design University and the University of Toronto. More information is available at andreathompson.ca.

Judith Thompson has written numerous plays and screenplays, including The Crackwalker, I Am Yours, Lion in the Street, Sled, Habitat, Lost and Delirious, and The Thrill. She won the Governor General’s Award for Drama in 1985 for White Biting Dog, and in 1989 for a collection of her plays, The Other Side of the Dark. She is proud to have won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award for Palace of the End, and has also won a Toronto Arts Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award, as well as a Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award and a Dora Mavor Moore Award. In 2005 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2007 she was awarded the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2008 she became the first Canadian to be awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, recognizing outstanding women playwrights each year. She is also the artistic director of RARE theatre, which has produced theatre pieces such as Rare (Soulpepper, 2012), created with nine performers with Down Syndrome, Borne (Soulpepper, 2014), created with nine wheelchair users, and Wildfire (Soulpepper, 2016) with seven members of the Rare cast. She is currently in the process of developing her newest play, After the Blackout, which will be performed at Soulpepper in May 2018 by six actors with exceptionalities.

Peggy Thompson is a screenwriter, film producer, story editor, and author. She was the screenwriter for the feature films The Lotus Eaters and Better than Chocolate and has also written extensively for television. She was recently executive producer on Sharon McGowan’s documentary Bearded Ladies: The Photography of Rosamond Norbury . She was an associate professor at UBC for many years, where she taught screenwriting in the creative writing program. She serves on the advocacy committee of Women in Film + Television Vancouver.

Aritha van Herk is the author of five novels, four works of non-fiction, and two works (with photographer George Webber) of place-writing, as well as hundreds of articles, reviews, and essays. Her irreverent but relevant history of Alberta, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, frames the MAVERICKS exhibition at the Glenbow Museum. Her latest work of prose poetry is Stampede and the Westness of West. She teaches creative writing and Canadian literature at the University of Calgary.

thom vernon is a writer, educator, and performer living in Toronto.

Darryl Whetter has published three books of fiction and two collections of poetry. His debut collection of stories was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2003. His bicycle novel, The Push & the Pull, followed in 2008. In 2012 he released Origins, a SSHRC-funded book of poems which examines evolution, energy, and extinction. Whetter has taught creative writing and English at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Windsor, Dalhousie University, Université Sainte-Anne, and at the first creative writing MA program in Southeast Asia at Singapore’s Lasalle College of the Arts. He has published or presented papers on contemporary literature in France, Sweden, Canada, Germany, the United States, India, and Iceland and has read internationally in Singapore, Bali, Malaysia, Wales, and Australia. His book reviews appear regularly in papers such as the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star. Between 2005 and 2008 he was a regular reviewer on the national CBC Radio show Talking Books. His latest books are the pot-smuggling novel Keeping Things Whole and the poetry collection Search Box Bed. See darrylwhetter.ca.