AV俱乐部

Selected Publications

• This Is Not a Hoax: Unsettling Truth in Canadian Culture
  Wilfrid Laurier University Press (WLUP), Waterloo ON. 2019.
• The Lightning Field. Gaspereau Press, Kentville NS. 2011. (novel)
  Finalist for the Thomas Head Raddall Award and the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Nominated for the International Dublin IMPAC Literary Award
• 鈥淭he Art of Stumbling.鈥� Poetry Is Dead Magazine. Issue 14: Fall 2016. Vancouver. 46-48.
• 鈥淐omplicated Truths in Contemporary Art: Inventions, Interventions, and Hoaxes.鈥�
  AV俱乐部 Review 93.1 (Spring 2013). Halifax. 95-110.
• 鈥淭he Daylight Factory鈥� (short fiction) Grimm Magazine (Fall 2006) no. 4. Kitchener.
  22-35. (Nominated for New American Voices)
• 鈥淎t the Akira Kurosawa Film Festival鈥� (short fiction) Malahat Review 153
  (Winter 2005) Victoria. 31-39. (Nominated for the Journey Prize)
• 鈥淏oxcar鈥� (short fiction) PRISM international (Fall 2004) 43:1. Vancouver. 29-33.

• 2019 Make Believe: The Secret Library of M. Prud鈥檋omme 鈥� A Rare Collection of Fakes
  Director and Co-Curator, prudhommelibrary.ca
• 2013 鈥淟ifetime Achievements.鈥� At The Edge (co-written chapter in a collaborative novel). Eds. Marjorie Anderson and Deborah Schnitzer. Unlimited Editions: Winnipeg, 2013.

• Canada Council New Chapter Grant - Lead Director, Co-Applicant (2017-2019)
• Langara College Centre for Applied Research Grant (2018)
• Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Writing Residency (2016)
• Canada Council Creation Grant (2013)
• Nova Scotia Creation Grant (2013)
• Harvard English Institute Scholarship (2012)
• SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Graduate Scholarship (2009-2012)
• University of Toronto, Graduate Fellowship (2008-2009)
• Massey College, Junior Fellowship (2008-2012)
• University of Toronto, Kathleen Coburn Award (2008)
• Canada Council Professional Emerging Writers Grant (2007)
• Concordia University, First Graduating Class Award (2006)
• Banff Centre for the Arts, Writing Studio Scholarship (2006)
• BC Arts Council Undergraduate Award for Creative Writing (2003)

Remarks

Hi. I鈥檓 Heather. I鈥檓 a fiction writer and academic who loves collaborations, hybrid forms and genres, interdisciplinary projects, and teaching. I am grateful for the chance to write and teach in K鈥檍ipuktuk on Mi鈥檏ma鈥檏i, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi鈥檏maq. I am grateful for the Black history and Black present in this place. I acknowledge that Indigenous and Black culture, intelligence, creativity, and resistance shape the city where I live, and that I benefit inordinately from this work. As a scholar and writer, I commit myself to learning and working against my complicity in the continued project of colonization.

I have previously taught smart and stylish students about stories and the small miracles that are commonly known as words at Langara College in Vancouver, located on the territories of the Musqueam, who have given the College the name sn蓹w虛ey蓹涩 lel蓹m虛, House of Teachings. I have taught Critical Theory and Art History at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Literature at Saint Mary鈥檚 University, English Composition at Concordia University, and workshops on Fiction, Poetry, Character, Creativity, Art and Activism, and Pilgrimage for the Writer鈥檚 Federation of Nova Scotia, the B.C. Writers Federation, Writers In the Schools, Sorrento Retreat and Conference Centre, and at Rivendell Retreat Centre on Bowen Island.

I believe that when we take and teach Creative Writing and Literature classes, we engage in radical acts of empathy and imagination that are needed now more than ever in service to our world. We give ourselves routines, rhythms, and community so that we are more bravely equipped to encounter discomfort, strangeness, and otherness-than-ourselves with grace and intelligence. We use improbably focused acts of attention to understand the galactic structures of a novel鈥檚 constellations, or the small gentle sway of steam rising from a character鈥檚 cup of tea 鈥� and this attention is at the root of empathy. When we take and teach Creative Writing and Literature we learn to still ourselves. We learn bravery, resilience, patience, and practice. We learn how to ask open and beautiful questions, and how to trust in our community and in the value of diverse experiences and voices.

These themes of stories and truth, trust and community, attention and diversity, and how words shape societies and self-understanding is also what I am most curious about in my own creative and academic work.