Bio

I’m a Winnipeg poet and mentor. Paradigm Riffs is forthcoming with At Bay Press in 2024. My second book Fields of Light and Stone came out in March 2020 and was a finalist for the 2022 KOBZAR Book Award for books about the Ukrainian-Canadian experience.

My debut collection Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016) received three 2017 Manitoba Book Awards: The Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, The Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, and was a finalist for a ReLit Award for Poetry.

Tell Them It Was Mozart gave me the opportunity to read at literary festivals including Thin Air (Winnipeg), Words Aloud (Durham, Ontario), and the Edmonton Poetry Festival, and at bookstores, cafes, and house readings in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Nova Scotia.

My poetry was also awarded second (in 2016) and third (in 2014) in Prairie Fire‘s Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award Contest, nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize, and shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine‘s 2015 and 2019 Poem of the Year. My poetry chapbooks are Roads of Stone (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2015), Dented Tubas (Kalamalka Press, 2019), Blue Moon, Red Herring (JackPine Press, 2019), and Irises (Dancing Girl Press, 2019).

I’ve benefited from the wisdom of established poets: I worked with Méira Cook in the Manitoba Writer’s Guild Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program in 2012 and studied under Don MacKay at the Sage Hill Writing Experience poetry colloquium in 2013.

I enjoy mentoring emerging writers and copyediting poetry manuscripts. I served as a Deep Bay artist-in-residence in Riding Mountain National Park in 2015 and 2016. With a masters in biblical studies and experience at religious publications, I have been commissioned to write cantata lyrics and liturgical readings. I am a member of the League of Canadian Poets, Manitoba Writers’ Guild, and Poetry in Voice. I graduate from the Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction in May 2023.

I live with my husband, son and daughter, and two odd rescue dogs named Lily and Rosie. In addition to all things book-related, I enjoy photography, pottery, crosswords, and eating other people’s baking.

Header photo by anthonymarkphotography.net.

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