The Morris House Reading Series brings both established and up-and-coming authors to Bishop’s University to present their work, answer questions, and meet with the audience during the informal reception that follows.

The Series is currently being supported by the Quebec Writers’ Federation, Bishop’s University Academic Enrichment Fund, The Writers’ Union of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, and Bishop’s University Speakers Committee. The Series is also one of the founding members of the Literary Umbrella of Quebec (LUQ), a coalition of English-language Quebec literary promoters that shares its resources for the benefits of writers, students, organizers and the general public.

Dr. Linda Morra

For more information about the Morris House Reading Series or upcoming readings, contact its organizer, Dr. Linda M. Morra (lmorra@ubishops.ca).

Linda Morra is a Professor of English at Bishop’s University and was the 2016-2017 Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at UCD, Dublin. She has been directing the Morris House Reading Series since 2008.

The 2023-2024 reading series includes the following:

Events are free and open to the public. Books are available for advance purchase at the Co-op on campus. Morris House Reading Series gratefully acknowledges the Speakers’ Committee and The Writers’ Union of Canada for funding and support.

Gregory Betts

Gregory Betts

Friday, September 22, 2023,
10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Location: NIC 008

Gregory Betts is a Canadian scholar, poet, editor and professor. He has taught at University of Toronto, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Brock University, and University College Dublin. He is currently a professor at Brock University with a specialty in Canadian and avant-garde literature. He has authored over ten books of poetry, including Dazzle Pods (2021), Sweet Forme: Shake-Speare’s Perfect Sonnets (Apothecary Press 2020), and This is Importance: A Students’ Guide to Literature (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013).  His SSHRC-funded research monograph, Finding Nothing: The VanGardes, 1959-1975, which explores subsequent manifestations of intermedia avant-garde art and literature in Vancouver, was awarded the BC Book Prize and the Gabrielle Roy Prize in 2022.

Elise Moser

Elise Moser

Thursday, October 12, 2023
5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Location: NIC 211 (hybrid event; please contact lmorra@ubishops.ca for Zoom link)

Elise Moser is the author of the YA novel Lily and Taylor (2013), from Groundwood Books. She has also published a novel for adults, Because I Have Loved and Hidden It (2009), from Cormorant Books, as well as many short stories and book reviews. She was the founding literary editor of Montreal’s online arts and culture magazine, The Rover (roverarts.com), and has collaborated with Leila Marshy to produce Mot/Town, a series of videos on Montreal writers in their neighbourhoods. Through the Quebec Writers’ Federation, she has led writing workshops and mentored emerging writers. She was president of QWF, 2009-2012.

We gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts and The Writers’ Union of Canada for their support of this event.

Erum Shazia Hassan

Erum Shazia Hasan

Thursday, November 16, 2023
5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Location: Online Event (please contact lmorra@ubishops.ca for Zoom link)

Erum Shazia Hasan was born in Canada, raised in France, and is of Pakistani and Indian heritage. She designs initiatives to help communities improve their livelihoods, ensuring opportunities for women while protecting biodiversity. A Sustainable Development Consultant for various UN agencies, she lives in Toronto with her husband and their two children. We Meant Well, published by ECW Press in 2023, is her first novel.

Book cover of We Meant Well by Erum Shazia Hassan
Ali Hassan

Ali Hassan

Thursday, March 14, 2024,
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Location: Bandeen Hall

Price: Free but REQUIRES A TICKET!

Ali Hassan is the host of stand-up comedy show Laugh Out Loud on CBC Radio and SiriusXM, a frequent guest-host on q and As it Happens – which air on CBC Radio and NPR – and the host of Canada Reads – the annual book-battle celebrating the best of Canadian literature. CBC host Tom Power has referred to him as the “Vince McMahon of books.” He’ll take it. 

Ali has toured Canada with his solo show Muslim Interrupted, and as part of the Just for Laughs cross-country tour, hosted by Rick Mercer. Among his Film & TV credits, he was recently in the films Mafia Inc., MySpy and Tammy’s Always Dying, and appeared in recent seasons of Workin’ Moms, Murdoch Mysteries, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. TV audiences can also see Ali right now as a recurring guest star in two new shows: Sort Of on CBC and HBO Max, and the new hit sitcom Run the Burbs on CBC TV & GEM. His comedic memoir, Is There Bacon In Heaven?, is now out with Simon & Schuster.

*  Tickets, although they are free, must be reserved through Centennial in advance of the event. See button above.

*  co-sponsored by the Ogden Glass Lecture Series and the Speakers’ Committee.

*  Photo credit: Pierre Gautreau

MHRS Archive

Enjoy looking through our archives to see who appeared at Bishop’s University for the Morris House Reading Series as far back as 2009.

Fall 2018 – Winter 2023

MHRS 2022-2023

David Bradford
November 24, 2022
David Bradford is the author of the Griffin Poetry Prize and Governor General Literary Awards finalist Dream of No One But Myself (Brick Books, 2021). Bradford is a poet, translator, editor, and organizer based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). He is the author of several chapbooks, including Nell Zink is Damn Free and The Plot.

Kasia Van Schaik
March 10, 2023
Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the linked story collection We Have Never Lived On Earth (The University of Alberta Press), which was a finalist for the 2022 Concordia University First Book Prize, and the poetry chapbook, Sea Burial Laws According to Country (Desert Pets Press). Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, the Best Canadian Poetry, and the CBC.

 

MHRS 2021-2022

Elise Moser
November 5, 2021
Elise Moser is the author of three books, including her YA novel Lily and Taylor, which was named to the Best Fiction for Young Adults 2014 list by the American Library Association. She is a freelance editor, coordinates the Atwater Writers Exhibition, and has led writing workshops for the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) and the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival.

Erin Wunker
November 26, 2021
Erin Wunker teaches, researches, and writes in Mi’kma’ki where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University. Her areas of interest include feminist theory, poetry, and poetics as well as literary and cultural production in Canada. She is the co-founder and managing editor of the feminist academic blog Hook & Eye: Fast Feminism, Slow Academe, and the co-director of the Dalhousie Feminist Seminar Series.

 

MHRS 2019-2020

Anakana Schofield
October 1, 2019
Anakana Schofield is the author of the acclaimed, Giller Prize-shortlisted novel Martin John (2015), which was also a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Goldsmiths Prize in the UK. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and named a best book of the year by the Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Sunday Business Post, Toronto Star, and The Irish Times, among others.

Kim Thúy
October 29, 2019
Kim Thúy’s debut novel Ru won the Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction at the 2010 Governor General’s Awards. An English edition, translated by Sheila Fischman, was published in 2012. The novel was a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

Readings from WATER LINES: New Writing from the Eastern Townships of Quebec
November 13, 2019

Marjorie Bruhmuller‘s poems have appeared in various literary journals in Canada and the US. She has been a member, or leader, of writing groups in the Townships for over 20 years. Her poetry collection, The Bell You Hardly Hear has recently been published by Ekstasis Editions. She lives in Milby.

An award-winning poet, Angela Leuck has been published in journals and anthologies around the world. She is the author of four books of poetry and editor of numerous anthologies. She has given readings and writing workshops at schools, libraries and national and international conferences. She currently teaches creative writing to at risk youth in the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Writers in the Community program. In spring 2018, she was Artist in Residence on Quebec’s Lower North Shore.

Steve Luxton was born in Coventry, England in 1946. He has published five collections of poetry, Late Romantics (with Rob Allen and Mark Teicher) (1981), the hills that pass by (1987), Iridium (1993), Luna Moth and Other Poems (2004), and In the Vision of Birds (2012), as well as a chapbook, Torrent’s Gate: Thomas Wolfe Visits Quebec (2013). His most recent collection is The Dying Meteorologist (2019). In 2012, he was the recipient of the Quebec Writers Federation’s prestigious “Community Award” for his work in promoting English-language literature in Quebec.

Jeff Parent is a resident of Lennoxville, currently enrolled in the Creative Writing MA program at Concordia University, and his work has been published in The Fiddlehead, Words(on)Pages, Lemon Hound, and The Temz Review amongst others.

Elise Moser
February 20, 2020
Elise Moser is the author of three books, including her YA novel Lily and Taylor, which was named to the Best Fiction for Young Adults 2014 list by the American Library Association. She is a freelance editor, coordinates the Atwater Writers Exhibition, and has led writing workshops for the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) and the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival.

 

MHRS 2018-2019

Marie Annharte Baker (Anishnaabe poet)
September 20, 2018
Annharte, AKA Marie Baker, is Anishinabe (Little Saskatchewan First Nation, Manitoba). She has moved her urban campground back to her birthplace, otherwise known as Winnipeg. She is the author of four poetry books, Indigena Awry (New Star Books, 2012), Exercises In Lip Pointing (New Star Books, 2003), Columbus Coyote Cafe (Moonprint, 1994) and Being On the Moon (Polestar, 1990; Raincoast, 2000). Her book of essays, interviews and memoir is AKA: Inendagosekwe (Capilano University Editions, 2013).

Creative Writers Panel, featuring Josh Quirion, Deanna Radford, and Jeff Parent
February 25, 2018

Josh Quirion is a recent graduate of Concordia University’s Masters in Creative Writing. His graduate thesis, Ashes of Auld, is a novella wherein the scholarly enterprises of higher education intersect with the revelries of collegiate buffoonery on a picturesque riverside property situated in a regional Anglophone borough of Quebec’s Eastern Townships.

Deanna Radford, writer, poet, and poet performer Deanna Radford is the curator of the Atwater Poetry Project. She is the former Communications and Membership Services. Coordinator at the Quebec Writers’ Federation and is pursuing an MA in creative writing at Concordia University.

Jeff Parent is a local poet, father, comic book enthusiast. He is a two-time recipient of the Bishop’s University Archdeacon F.G. Scott Prize in English, a finalist for the Words(on)Pages Blodwyn Memorial Prize in 2017, and runner-up in The Fiddlehead Magazine Tell It Slant poetry contest in 2016.

Terence Byrnes
March 18, 2019
Terence Byrnes says that he began publishing poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and photography “when giant lizards roamed the earth.” Over that unlikely span, he has published three books and his work has appeared in magazines ranging from Rolling Stone to Reader’s Digest to The Walrus. His photography has been published and shown internationally.

Fall 2013 – Winter 2018

MHRS 2017-2018

Shannon Webb-Campbell
November 16, 2017
Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed-Indigenous (Mi’kmaq) settler poet, writer, and critic currently based in Montreal. Her first book, Still No Word (2015), was the inaugural recipient of Egale Canada’s Out In Print Award. She was Canadian Women in the Literary Arts critic-in-residence in 2014, and sits on CWILA’s board of directors.

Shani Mootoo
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Shani Mootoo is a novelist and a visual artist. Mootoo’s novels include Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, longlisted for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Lambda Award; Valmiki’s Daughter, longlisted for the Scotia Bank Giller Prize; He Drown She in the Sea, longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award; and Cereus Blooms at Night, shortlisted for the Giller Prize, The Chapters First Novel Award, The Ethel Wilson Book Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Elise Moser
Elise Moser has published three books: a novel for adults, Because I Have Loved and Hidden It (2009), a YA novel, Lily and Taylor (2013), and What Milly Did: The Remarkable Pioneer of Plastics Recycling (2016), a nonfiction book for kids aged 8-12. She has led writing workshops and mentored emerging writers for the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF).

Catherine Austen
Catherine Austen is an award-winning author of books for children and teens, including All Good Children and Walking Backwards (Orca Book Publishers) and Twenty-six Tips for Surviving Grade 6 (Lorimer). Her books have won the Canadian Library Association Young Adult Book Award, the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award for English Fiction, and the Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

 

MHRS 2015-2016

Heather O’Neill
September 17, 2015
Heather O’Neill is the author of The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, which was a finalist for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. It was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Orange Prize. O’Neill is a regular contributor to CBC Books, CBC Radio, This American Life, The New York Times Magazine, The Gazette, The Walrus, and The Globe and Mail.

Jordan Tannahill
February 11, 2016
Jordan Tannahill is a playwright, theatre director and filmmaker. The Globe and Mail recently called Jordan “the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom ‘interdisciplinary’ is not a buzzword, but a way of life.” In collaboration with William Ellis, Jordan runs the alternative art space Videofag, out of a defunct barbershop in Toronto’s Kensington Market.

Barry Healey
March 12, 2016
His motion picture credits include the award-winning shorts: Outtakes (1978) writer/director/producer; The Night Before The Morning After (1979) writer/director; and the feature films: The Grey Fox (1982) co-producer; One Magic Christmas (1985) writer; Big Deal (1985) director; Hollywood North (2003) writer. The Sex Life of the Amoeba is his first novel. His second book is Exhilarating Prose (Baraka Books, co-edited with Cordelia Strube).

 

MHRS 2014-2015

Mark Lavorato
September 25, 2014
Mark Lavorato is the author of three novels, Serafim & Claire (House of Anansi, 2014), Believing Cedric (Brindle & Glass, 2011), and Veracity (Rain Publishing, 2007). His debut collection of poetry, Wayworn Wooden Floors (Porcupine’s Quill, 2012), was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award.

Madeleine Thien
November 13, 2014
Madeleine Thien is the author of three books of fiction, including her most recent novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, which was a finalist of the 2014 International Literature Prize awarded in Berlin. She is a recipient of the City of Vancouver Book Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and the Ovid Festival Prize, and her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, PEN America, Asia Literary Review, Brick and elsewhere. Her books have been translated into 22 languages.

Claire Holden Rothman
February 13, 2015
Claire Holden Rothman is the author of two story collections and a best-selling novel, The Heart Specialist, long-listed for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize and published in six countries. Her translation of the first French Canadian novel, L’influence d’un livre (The Influence of a Book) by Philippe-Ignace-François Aubert de Gaspé, won the John Glassco Translation Prize.

Jason Camlot
Jason Camlot is the author of four collections of poetry, The Debaucher (2008, Insomniac Press) Attention All Typewriters (2005, DC Books), The Animal Library (2001, DC Books), and, most recently, What the World Said (Mansfield, 2013).

 

MHRS 2013-2014

Gillian Sze
September 26, 2013
Gillian Sze is the author of The Anatomy of Clay (2011) and Fish Bones (2009), which was shortlisted for the 2009 QWF McAuslan First Book Prize. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals and she has served as a poetry judge for This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt and the National Magazine Awards.

Gianna Patriarca
October 3, 2013
Gianna Patriarca was born in Italy and came to Canada as a child. Her publications include eight books of poetry and one children’s book. Her first collection, Italian Women and Other Tragedies, was runner-up to the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award. My Etruscan Face was short-listed for the Bressani Award in 2009. Her work is extensively anthologized and has been adapted for Canada Stage Theatre and for CBC radio drama.

Connie Guzzo McParland
October 3, 2013
Born in Italy, raised in Montreal, Connie Guzzo-McParland has enjoyed an eclectic mix of life experiences. She majored in Italian literature at Concordia University, then pursued a teaching and business career before graduating from the Creative Writing Master’s program at Concordia University where she received the 2006-2007 David McKeen Award for Creative Writing for her thesis/novel Girotondo.

Charles Foran
October 17, 2013
Charlie Foran was born and raised in Toronto. He holds degrees from the University of Toronto and the University College, Dublin, and has taught in China, Hong Kong, and Canada. He has published ten books, including four novels, and writes regularly for magazines and newspapers. He is a contributing reviewer for The Globe and Mail and has won awards for his fiction, non-fiction, and journalism.

Erin Mouré
October 24, 2013
Erin Mouré is one of Canada’s most eminent and respected poets, and a translator from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese. Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Furious, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for Domestic Fuel, and the AM Klein Poetry Prize for Little Theatres, Mouré has published twelve books of poetry, including A Frame of the Book, co-published in the U.S. by Sun and Moon Press, and five books of poetry in translation.

Douglas Gibson
November 7, 2013
Douglas Gibson has an impressive track record in the publishing industry. He first worked in publishing as a trainee editor with Doubleday Canada. He became its Managing Editor in 1969 and remained until 1974. Macmillan hired him thereafter as Editorial Director of the Trade Division, which brought him in touch with many legends, including Morley Callaghan, W.O. Mitchell and Hugh MacLennan.

Hannah Moscovich
February 13, 2014
Hannah Moscovitch’s writing for the stage includes This is War, East of Berlin, The Russian Play, Essay, Little One, Other People’s Children, The Huron Bride (a ghost story), and In This World (for young audiences). Hannah’s plays have been produced across the country and in the United States, including at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, where she is currently playwright-in-residence.

Fall 2009 – Winter 2013

MHRS 2012-2013

Katrina Best
September 27, 2012
Originally from the UK, Katrina Best began her professional writing career as an in-house writer and editor on a national women’s magazine in London, England in the 1990s. Her first book, Bird Eat Bird, a collection of short stories, was published by Insomniac Press in 2010, and went on to win the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada and the Caribbean). As part of the prize, Katrina travelled to the Sydney Writers’ Festival in Australia, where she and the other regional winners participated in readings and community outreach.

Frances Itani
October 18, 2012
Author of 14 books, Frances Itani had a spectacular international debut with her first novel, Deafening, which received a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It became a #1 bestseller in Canada and has been published and translated in seventeen countries.

Michèle Plomer
October 24, 2012
Michèle Plomer was born in Montreal. She has published four novels: Le jardin sablier, 2007, (prix Alfred-Desrochers ; spécial mention prix Anne-Hébert, Paris ; finalist prix Archambault ; shortlisted prix des Libraires ; shortlisted Prix France-Québec). HKPQ, 2009, (prix France-Québec; finalist prix Archambault ; shortlisted prix des Libraires). Volumes 1 and 2 of the Dragonville Trilogy, Porcelaine, 2011, Encre, 2012.

Anne Fortier
October 24, 2012
Anne Fortier grew up in Denmark and emigrated to the United States in 2002 to work in film. She co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Fire and Ice: The Winter War of Finland and Russia and holds a Ph.D. in the History of Ideas from Aarhus University, Denmark. Her first novel, Hyrder paa Bjerget, was published in Denmark in 2005 and again in 2011.

Carmine Starnino
November 15, 2012
Starnino is a Canadian poet, essayist, educator, and editor. He was born in Montréal, Québec, into an Italian heritage. His first poetry collection The New World (1997) was nominated for the 1997 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the 1997 Gerald Lampert Award. His second collection Credo (2000) won the 2001 Canadian Authors Association Prize for Poetry and the 2001 David McKeen Award for Poetry.

Jeramy Dodds
February 21, 2013
Dodds grew up in Orono, Canada. His first collection of poems, Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach House Books, 2008), was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the 2007 CBC Literary Award, and the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award.

 

MHRS 2011-2012

Tess Fragoulis
October 6, 2011
Tess Fragoulis has been published in numerous literary journals including Canadian Fiction Magazine, Grain, and Blood & Aphorisms. Her first book, Stories to Hide from Your Mother (1997), was nominated for the QSPELL First Book Award in 1998. It was later adapted into the television series, Bliss. Ariadne’s Dream, Fragoulis’ second novel, was published in 2001 and was longlisted for the IMPAC International Dublin Literary Prize.

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
February 2, 2012
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is a poet, writer, publisher, librettist, activist, and Indigenous arts advocate. Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines in Canada and around the world. She has also released the poetry collection My Heart is a Stray Bullet, and two poetry and music CDs: Standing Ground and A Constellation of Bones. With Maori hip hop artist and producer Te Kupu, she produced A Constellation of Bones, which was nominated for a 2008 Canadian Aboriginal Music Award.

Anne Michaels
March 16, 2012
Anne Michaels is the celebrated author of Fugitive Pieces, which was published in 1996. Fugitive Pieces follows the story of Jakob Beer and his journey from Poland, through Greece, to Canada as he comes to terms with what happened to him and his family during the Holocaust. Her novel, which was made into a motion picture in 2007, has earned her numerous prizes, including the Trillium Prize, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, The Beatrice and Martin Fischer Award, and the Orange Prize. Michaels has also published several collections of poetry.

Jeffrey Moore
March 17, 2012
Born in Montreal, Jeffrey Moore was educated at the University of Toronto, the Sorbonne (Paris) and the University of Ottawa. His award-winning novels, published in some 20 countries, include Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain, which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and contended for the QSPELL Award, and The Memory Artists, which won the Canadian Authors Association Award and was shortlisted for four other prizes. Both novels have been optioned for film.

Jeramy Dodds
March 17, 2012
Jeramy Dodds grew up in Orono, Ontario, Canada, and received his BA from Trent University in English Literature and Anthropology, and an MA from the University of Iceland in Medieval Icelandic Studies. His poems have been translated into Latvian, Hungarian, Finnish, French, Swedish, Icelandic and German. He is the winner of the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award and the 2007 CBC Literary Award for poetry.

John Moss
March 17, 2012
John Moss has moved from being a critic to literary writing to writing mysteries. He thinks of this as a process of maturation. Reluctant Dead, the third in the Quin and Morgan series came out in the spring of 2011, following Still Waters (2008), and Grave Doubts (2009). He is also working on a mystery series featuring a former philosopher, Harry Lindstrom, and his dead wife, Karen Malone.

 

MHRS 2010-2011

Stephanie Bolster
September 30, 2010
Stephanie Bolster has authored three collections of poetry: White Stone: The Alice Poems (Véhicule Editions, 1998), which won the Governor General’s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award; Two Bowls of Milk (McClelland & Stewart, 1999), which won the Archibald Lampman Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award; and Pavilion (McClelland & Stewart, 2002). She is the editor of The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems¬ by Diana Brebner and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems.

Susan McMaster
November 18, 2010
Susan McMaster has published twelve collections of poetry, three of which have come out in the past three years, including Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (Black Moss Press, 2009), which has gone into second printing, and Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New (Black Moss), which is slated to appear in the spring of 2010. Her seventh collection of poetry, Until the Light Bends (Black Moss Press, 2004), was shortlisted for both the 2005 Ottawa Book Award and the Archibald Lampman Poetry Award.

M. NourbeSe Philip
January 27, 2011
M. NourbeSe Philip is a Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist who is renowned for her experimentation with literary form and for her commitment to social justice. Her published poetry includes She Tries her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks (1989), Salmon Courage (1983) and Thorns (1980). While still in manuscript form, She Tries Her Tongue won the Cuban Casa de Las Americas prize in 1988. Her prose works include a novel for young adults, titled Harriet’s Daughter (1988); essays and articles published in Frontiers (1992) and Showing Grit (1993); and Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence (1991), a narrative about the metaphoric return to Africa.

Rawi Hage
February 10, 2011
Rawi Hage, born in Beirut, moved to Montreal in 1991 where he pursued his artistic and literary career. He is both an accomplished writer and novelist. He has published two novels, the first of these being De Niro’s Game (Anansi 2006). It was shortlisted for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2006 Governor General’s Award, and won the 2008 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His second novel is Cockroach (Anansi 2008), which was also shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award; it won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize, awarded by the Quebec Writers’ Federation.

Richard Van Camp
March 28, 2011
Richard Van Camp, a member of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Nation from the Northwest Territories, Canada, currently teaches Creative Writing for Aboriginal Students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. He has authored two children’s books with the Cree artist, George Littlechild, A Man Called Raven and What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses? and a collection of short stories, Angel Wing Splash Pattern (Kegedonce Press 2002). He is also author of the novel, The Lesser Blessed (Douglas & McIntyre 2004), which is being turned into a film by First Generation Films.

Steven Heighton
March 29, 2011
Steven Heighton has published nine books, including his poetry collections, Stalin’s Carnival (Quarry 1989), The Ecstasy of Skeptics (Anansi, 1994) and The Address Book (Anansi, 2004); the short story collections Flight Paths of the Emperor (Porcupine’s Quill, 1992) and On Earth as It is (Porcupine’s Quill, 1992); and his novels The Shadow Boxer (Knopf, 2000, a bestseller in Canada) and Afterlands (Knopf, 2005), which was published in six countries. His work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, the Journey Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award.

 

MHRS 2009-2010

Armand Garnet Ruffo
September 17, 2009
Armand Garnet Ruffo’s work is strongly influenced by his Ojibway heritage. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, Opening In the Sky and At Geronimo’s Grave, winner of the 2002 Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry, and the creative biography, Grey Owl: the Mystery of Archie Belaney. His work includes directing a feature film adaptation of his CBC Showcase award winning play A Windigo Tale (2009) and writing a creative biography on the acclaimed Ojibway painter Norval Morrisseau.

Sarah Dowling
October 22, 2009
Sarah Dowling is originally from Regina, Saskatchewan. She received a B.A. in English from Bishop’s University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Temple University, and is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Capilano Review, Cue, Dusie, EOAGH, How2, the ixnay reader, and West Coast Line. Her first book of poetry, Security Posture, won the 2009 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

Claire Rothman
November 12, 2009
Claire Rothman has lived all her life in Montreal. She has worked as a lawyer, a columnist for the Montreal Gazette, a literary translator and a teacher at Marianopolis College and McGill University. She currently makes her living translating for film and television. She has written two collections of short stories, Salad Days, and Black Tulips, a novel, The Heart Specialist, and she won the John Glassco Translation Award in 1993 for The Influence of a Book.

Pam Calabrese Maclean
November 19, 2009
Pam Calabrese Maclean lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia where she works in the Library of St. Francis Xavier University. Her poems have appeared in such literary journals as The Antigonish Review, Dandelion, subTerrain, Concrete Wolf, Passager, and The New Writer. She was the recipient of the 2000 and the 2003 Ray Burrell Poetry Award.

Sally Clark
March 26, 2010
Sally Clark is a playwright, painter and filmmaker. She has been the resident playwright at Theatre Passe Muraille, Nightwood Theatre, The Shaw Festival and Nakai Theatre. Her play Moo won the Chalmers Award, and she was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for her play The Trial of Judith K. She has written and directed two short films, Ten Ways to Abuse an Old Woman and The Art of Conversation. Ten Ways to Abuse an Old Woman won the special Jury Award at the Henri Langlois International Short Film Festival.