Canadian poet and scientist Liz Howard, has been selected as UWinnipeg’s 2022 Jake MacDonald Writer in Residence. Howard also just been shortlisted for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize, one of Canada’s top poetry prizes.
The Jake MacDonald Writer in Residence begins September 18 and runs online through December 18. The program benefits students and the community, as well as writers across Canada who want to hone their craft.
Liz’s work is absolutely stunning, and I think she epitomizes the spirit of collaboration, innovation and productivity that this new residency embodies.
Dr. Sandy Pool
Howard was short-listed for her book Letters in a Bruised Cosmos (McClelland & Stewart). The judges cited “Like dark matter in the bloodstream, or the star-shaped cells in the brain and spinal cord, the poet carries this vestige within her, observing its shape as a present absence in the spilled ashes of her Indigenous father, or in dissociative childhood experiences of abjection, or in meditations on cognition and Indigenous cosmology. The poems in Letters in a Bruised Cosmos are intimate, astonishing, and moving caresses of the bruise the past makes within and around us, marking the many ways in which ‘history is a sewing motion / along a thin membrane.'”
During her residency, Howard will participate in two public events, The Jake MacDonald Reading and also the International Writer’s Panel, where the Howard is ‘paired’ with an international writer for an exciting craft-based discussion of creative writing and social justice.
The dates for both these events will be announced in August.
Dr. Sandy Pool, Chair of the Writer-in-Residence Committee and assistant professor of creative writing and English, said: “I am so thrilled to have asked Liz Howard to be our 2022/2023 Jake MacDonald Writer In Residence. Liz’s work is absolutely stunning, and I think she epitomizes the spirit of collaboration, innovation and productivity that this new residency embodies.”
Howard was born and raised in northern Ontario. She received an Honours Bachelor of Science with High Distinction from the University of Toronto. Her poetry has appeared on Canadian literary journals such as The Capilano Review, The Puritan, and Matrix Magazine. Her chapbook, Skullambient, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol Chapbook Award. She recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing through the University of Guelph and works as a research officer in cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto.
The Jake MacDonald Writer-in-Residence program was made possible by the creative thinking and generosity of MacDonald’s family, friends, and peers through the Jake MacDonald Writers’ Fund and created by a generous founding gift from his friend Dr. Angus Reid.
