Past Writers-in-Residence

Metonymy Press co-founders Ashley Fortier and Oliver Fugler will be in residence January through March, 2023. Metonymy Press is based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal), unceded Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory. They publish literary fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers in the hope of reducing barriers to publishing for authors whose perspectives are underrepresented. They produce quality materials relevant to queer, feminist, and social justice communities. Throughout the season, Metonymy authors and editors will be holding events on small press publishing, the Canadian literary scene and more, and they will showcase their own work through readings and events. They will also hold office hours to engage in conversations on publishing, writing and more. 

Events:

• January 18 - Roundtable on small press publishing in Canada featuring Oliver Fugler and Ashley Fortier of Metonymy Press, David Bradford of House House Press, Eloisa Aquino of B&D Press, and Ashley Opheim of Metatron Press. Moderated by English PhD student Jay Ritchie. The event will be live streamed and live captioned. Arts 160, 12-1:30 pm. 
• January 24 - In conversation between Felix Chau Bradley and Metonymy author Markus Harwood-Jones about editorial relationships. Felix is currently editing Markus's forthcoming YA novel, The Haunting of Adrian Yates. The event will be live streamed and live captioned. Arts 160, 5-6 pm.
• February 6 - Metonymy author showcase and cabaret, hosted by Erin Hurley (English). This event features readings from writer-in-residence H. Felix Chau Bradley, Kama La Mackerel, and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, and participation of Metonymy authors Addie Tsai, Shanice Nicole, and more. The readings will be followed by a wine and cheese reception. The event will be live streamed and live captioned. Leacock 232, 5-7 pm
• February 20 - A translation conversation between Valérie Bah, Kama La Mackerel, and Stéphane Martelly, moderated by Alanna Thain (English) and Catherine Leclerc (Département des littératures de langue française, de traduction et de creation) about translation in the context of Bah’s novel Les Enrag.é.es / The Rage Letters. The conversation will focus on translating within and across queer, trans, Black, multilingual and diaspora communities. Co-sponsored by Département des littératures de langue française, de traduction et de creation and Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires en études montréalaises. The event will be live streamed and live captioned. Leacock 232, 6-8 pm.
• March 29 - A discussion featuring co-editors of the upcoming queer and trans Arab anthology El Ghourabaa — Eli Tareq and Samia Marshy — and El Ghourabaa contributor Leila Marshy. El Bechelany-Lynch and S. Marshy will discuss the process of choosing pieces for the anthology, working with so many authors at once, and their vision for this anthology. L. Marshy will join them to discuss the collaborative editorial experience. The discussion will be moderated by Sabrina Attar. Arts Building, Room 160, 4-5 pm

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Poet Liz Howard’s debut collection of work, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent (McClelland & Stewart, 2015), was shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General’s Award for Poetry and won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos (McClelland & Stewart, 2021), has garnered critical acclaim and is shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian Art, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Magazine, and Best Canadian Poetry 2018. She is one of the jurors for McGill’s 2022 Montreal International Poetry Prize. Howard received an Honours Bachelor of Science with High Distinction from the University of Toronto, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. She is of mixed settler and Anishinaabe heritage.

Learn more about Howard's work.

Experimental nonfiction filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright, and poet Alison McAlpine is the author of 2018 poetic nonfiction film Cielo, about star gazing in Chile's Atacama Desert. Her first movie, Second Sight (2008), an award-winning mid-length film which screened at more than 35 international film festival and broadcast of BBC.

Cielo, Alison’s first feature, premiered at the 55th New York Film Festival 2017, and has been presented at over 150 international film festivals and cinemas across the world, including Karlovy Vary IFF, Hot Docs; Film Forum, New York City, TIFF Bell Lightbox Toronto, and Filmhouse Edinburgh. Named as “One of the best documentaries of 2018” by Esquire and The Guardian, Cielo has won several awards and four 2019 Gala Québec nominations.

Learn more about McApline's work.

Yvette Nolan’s plays include BLADE, Annie Mae’s Movement, The Birds (a modern adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy), The Unplugging (Jessie Richardson Award, Outstanding Original Script), and Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show (co-writer). Shanawdithit, for which she wrote the libretto, will be produced by Tapestry New Opera in Toronto in May. Her book Medicine Shows about Indigenous theatre in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015, and Performing Indigeneity, which she co-edited with Ric Knowles, in 2016. From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father, she has lived in Winnipeg, Whitehorse, Guysborough, Toronto, and currently, Saskatoon.

Yvette Nolan talks about her work and background in an interview with Marilyn Santucci.

Nolan's adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds was performed at Moyse Hall on November 21-23 and November 28-30, 2018.

Nyla Matuk is the author of two books of poetry: Sumptuary Laws and Stranger, both with Véhicule Press. She is also a contributor to Carcanet’s New Poetries VI anthology and Best Canadian Poetry in English, and a finalist for The Walrus Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Award. Her poems have appeared recently in The New Yorker, PN Review, The Walrus, Poetry, and other magazines in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. Born in Winnipeg, she has lived in Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, London, Ont., and Toronto.

www.nylamatuk.ca

Perrine Leblanc est née à Montréal. Elle est diplômée en lettres de l'Université Laval et de l'Université de Montréal. Elle a exercé les métiers de correctrice et d'éditrice, notamment chez Leméac et VLB éditeur, avant de faire paraître en 2010 son premier roman, L'homme blanc (Le Quartanier), publié l'année suivante dans la collection Blanche des éditions Gallimard sous le titre Kolia, puis en traduction anglaise en 2013. Elle a reçu le Grand prix du livre de Montréal et le prix littéraire du Gouverneur général du Canada. Son deuxième roman, Malabourg, finaliste du prix Françoise-Sagan, a paru chez Gallimard au printemps 2014. La traduction anglaise de Malabourg, The Lake, publiée par House of Anansi Press en 2015, a été finaliste du prix du Gouverneur général du Canada dans la catégorie Traductions.

www.perrineleblanc.com

Alix Ohlin's most recent novel, Inside, was a finalist for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize.  Her other books are Signs and Wonders, Babylon and Other Stories, and The Missing Person.  Her writing appears in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Walrus, The New York Times, and many other places.  Born and raised in Montreal, she lives in Easton, Pennsylvania and teaches at Lafayette College and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. 

Learn more about Ohlin's work.

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Actor, stage director, writer and screenwriter, Alexis Martin has been an integral part of the Quebec artistic realm for the past twenty-five years. Over the years, he has accumulated close to forty roles on the theatre stage in the Montreal scene. Since 1999 he has been the co-artistic director of the Nouveau Théâtre Expérimental where he has experimented in writing, acting and staging.

Alexis Martin has also been a part of the Quebec television landscape; participating in many roles on such series as Les Parent, Tout la vérité, Vice caché, Les Boys, Apparences and Les beaux malaises. He won the Gemini award for Best Lead Actor in a Dramatic Series in 2012 for his role of Gaétan in Apparences. He will appear in the upcoming Louis Bélanger series Séquelles. On the silver screen, he’s been cast in many Quebec films such as Le party by Pierre Falardeau, NÔ by Robert Lepage, Un 32 août sur terre by Denis Villeneuve, Un dimanche à Kigali by Robert Favreau, Les Boys de Louis Saïa, L’audition by Luc Picard, Le collectionneur by Jean Beaudin, Route 132 by Louis Bélanger and Le baiser du barbu by Yves P. Pelletier. Recently he was also in Louis Belanger’s latest film, Les mauvaises herbes as well as Philippe Falardeau’s Guibord s’en va en guerre. Alexis won a Jutra award for his interpretation of Philippe in Un 32 août sur terre.

Sean Michaels was born in Stirling, Scotland, in 1982. He founded the pioneering mp3blog Said the Gramophone in 2003, while completing his B.A. at McGill, and has gone on to write for publications including The Guardian, McSweeney's, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Walrus and The Believer. Sean's debut novel, Us Conductors, received the 2014 Giller Prize and was recognized by the CBC and NPR as one of the books of the year. He currently maintains a weekly music column for the Globe & Mail. Follow him on Twitter at @stgramophone.

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Nicole Brossard est l’écrivaine en résidence au DLLF en 2015-2016. Elle est née à Montréal. Poète, romancière et essayiste elle a publié plus de quarante livre depuis 1965. Ses livres ont été traduits en plusieurs langues. Mentionnons: Installations, Musée de l’os et de l’eau, Le Désert mauve, La lettre aérienne, Hier, Piano blanc et le plus récent Lumière fragment d’envers. Dès le début des années 1970, son œuvre s’est vite imposée comme une source d’inspiration formelle pour toute une génération. Notons aussi que, outre son œuvre qui comprend plus de quarante titres, Nicole Brossard a cofondé la revue littéraire La Barre du Jour (1965-1975), coréalisé un documentaire Some American Feminists (1975) et elle a publié quatre anthologies de poésie permettant de mieux faire connaître et découvrir la poésie des femmes au Québec, la poésie québécoise dans la francophonie et dans le monde ainsi que les écritures gaies et lesbiennes au Québec.

Son œuvre a été à plusieurs reprises consacrée par de nombreux prix littéraires dont le prix du Gouverneur général en 1974 et en 1984, le Prix International de Poésie de Trois-Rivières en 1989 et en 1999, le Prix Athanase-David, en 1991 et, en 2006, le Prix Molson du Conseil des Arts du Canada. En 2013, elle recevait le Prix international de littérature francophone Benjamin Fondane.

2015 marque cinquante ans d’écriture et de publication et cette année, la Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre (Paris), lui a consacré, du 4 juin au 27 juin, une exposition intitulée: Portrait de Nicole Brossard ou L’horizon du fragment. Cet automne, trois nouveaux livres paraîtront: un recueil de poèmes Temps qui installe les miroirs, un essai sur la traduction intitulé Et me voici soudain en train de refaire le monde ainsi que traduction anglaise de son recueil Ardeur.

The Department of English is pleased to announce that Anita Rau Badami is the new Richler Writer-In-Residence for the 2014-2015 year.  Anita is the author of four novels: Tamarind Mem, The Hero’s Walk, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? and Tell it to the Trees. Her short stories and articles have appeared in national and international periodicals. Anita’s books are critically acclaimed and have been published in more than a dozen languages across the world. She is the recipient of awards including the Marian Engel Prize, the Regional Commonwealth Award and the Premio Berto Prize for International Literature. Her books have also been nominated for other awards such as the Hugh MacLellan Prize for fiction, the Orange Prize for Literature, the IMPAC Dublin Prize, and the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction. She is currently working on her fifth book.

For more information on Badami's work, please visit: http://www.anitaraubadami.ca/

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Suzanne Jacob est l’écrivain en résidence au DLLF en 2014-2015.  Elle est née à Amos en Abitibi. Elle a fait ses études classiques au Collège de Nicolet (baccalauréat ès arts de l’université Laval). Après un bref passage à la faculté des Lettres de l’université de Montréal, Suzanne Jacob entreprend une vie qui la conduit à l’écriture, comme elle l’a racontée dans ses essais Écrire, comment, pourquoi, La bulle d’encre et Histoires de s’entendre. Poésie, nouvelles, chroniques, scénarios, romans, Suzanne Jacob a pratiqué presque tous les genres. Son roman Laura Laur s’est mérité le prix du Gouverneur général et le prix Paris-Québec. Du dernier paru de ses romans, Gilles Marcotte a écrit, dans Actualité: "Fugueuses est un roman violemment original, d’une écriture superbement intelligente, fertile en dérapages contrôlés, qui agrippe son lecteur dès la première page et ne le lâchera plus, même après la fin de sa lecture".

The Department of English is pleased to announce that Anosh Irani is the new Writer-in-Residence for the 2013-2014 year. Mr. Irani was born and brought up in Bombay, India, and moved to Vancouver in 1998.  He is the author of the novelsThe Cripple and His Talismans and The Song of Kahunsha, the latter of which was a finalist for CBC Radio's Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and which has been published in thirteen countries, achieving best seller status in Canada, China, and Italy. His play Bombay Black won 4 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, including Outstanding New Play. Irani was also nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Drama for his anthology The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black.  His latest novel Dahanu Road was longlisted for the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize.  

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Marc Zaffran (dont le nom de plume est Martin Winckler) est l’écrivain en résidence au DLLF en 2013-2014. Il succède à Élise Turcotte dans le cadre du programme d’écrivain en résidence Mordecai-Richler. Il donne un atelier d’écriture narrative à l’automne 2013 et un atelier de création littéraire à l’hiver 2014. Auteur d’une quinzaine de romans ainsi que de nouvelles, de contes, de récits autographiques, d’essais, de chroniques radiophoniques et de traductions littéraires, scientifiques et médicales, Marc Zaffran s’est également intéressé à la création audio-visuelle. Il a présenté de nombreuses communications et conférences et a donné des ateliers de création à l’Université de Montréal, à l’Université d’Ottawa et aux étudiants en médicine de l’Université McGill.

The Department of English and the Département de langue et littérature françaises are thrilled to announce this year’s selected Mordecai Richler Writers-in-Residence are celebrated authors Steven Heighton and Élise Turcotte. Last year’s writers, Kathleen Winter and Louis Hamelin were a tremendous success and generated incredible feedback from the McGill community and beyond. To ensure the longevity of this inspiring Program, private financial support is essential. Our aim is to secure endowed funding from individuals who share a passion for literature in all forms. With your visionary support, together we can nurture new talent by providing valuable insight into the creative process. To learn more, visit www.mcgill.ca/arts/alumni/campaign/richler

Steven Heighton’s recent books are The Dead Are More Visible and Workbook: Memos & Dispatches on Writing. His novel, Afterlands, appeared in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review editors’ choice, a best of year choice in ten publications in Canada, the USA, and the UK; and has been optioned for film. His fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages and appeared in such publications as London Review of Books, Poetry, Tin House, The Walrus, Best American Poetry (2012), and Best English Stories. He has received four gold National Magazine Awards, been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Award, and Britain’s W.H. Smith Award. Steven is also an occasional fiction reviewer for the New York Times Book Review.

Élise Turcotte a publié plusieurs recueils de poésie dont La Voix de Carla (prix Émile-Nelligan 1987), La Terre est ici (Prix Émile-Nelligan 1989), Sombre Ménagerie (Grand Prix du festival international de la poésie 2002, prix de poésie Terrasses Saint-Sulpice de la revue Estuaire 2002). Elle a écrit trois romans, Le Bruit des choses vivantes (prix Louis Hémon), L’Île de la merci et La Maison étrangère, qui remporte le Prix du Gouverneur général en 2003. En 2007, elle publie une série de récits intitulée Pourquoi faire une maison avec ses morts. Ses livres sont traduits en anglais, en catalan et en espagnol. Élise est aussi nouvelliste et l’auteur de plusieurs livres pour enfants. Elle vit à Montréal et enseigne la littérature au cégep depuis 1986.

The Department of English and the Département de langue et littérature françaises are thrilled to announce the two novelists selected as the inaugural Mordecai Richler Writers-in-Residence.

Kathleen Winter's story collection, boYs, won the Metcalf-Rooke award and the 2008 Winterset Award. Her 2010 Canadian best-selling novel Annabel was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Award, and the Orange Prize. The book has been translated into several languages. Ms. Winter will begin her residency at McGill for the 2012 winter term.

Novelist and journalist Louis Hamelin carved a unique and important voice in Quebec and Canadian literature in 1989 with his Governor General’s award-winning first novel, La Rage. He has since written eight books, including La Constellation du Lynx, the 2011 winner of the Prix des libraires du Québec. Mr. Hamelin is also a regular writer for Le Devoir and collaborator on numerous literary journals and reviews. Mr. Hamelin earned his undergraduate degree from McGill University in science and agriculture and a Masters degree in Literature from UQAM. Mr. Hamelin will begin his residency at McGill in September.