The Jake MacDonald Writer-in-Residence Program
The Department of English is pleased to announce the Jake MacDonald Writer in Residence for Fall 2022: Liz Howard
The University of Winnipeg English department is thrilled to announce the second year of the Jake MacDonald Writer-in-Residence Program.
The second writer to hold the Jake MacDonald residency will be acclaimed Canadian poet, Liz Howard. We look forward to hosting Liz as an online writer in residence from September 18th to December 18th, 2022. You can read more about Jake MacDonald and Liz Howard below.
Liz will be participating in two events during her tenure: The Jake Macdonald Writer In Residence Reading (October 13th at 7 pm. Winnipeg time) and The Jake Macdonald International Writer’s Panel (November 17th at 7 pm. Winnipeg time). The international guest for the second event will be announced as soon as it is finalized.
In terms of writing feedback, Liz will look at manuscripts 5-8 pages in length. Her expertise in poetry but she is open to giving feedback on writing in other genres.
Students can contact Liz for appointments via email at li.howard@uwinnipeg.ca . University of Winnipeg students will be given priority for meetings and local writers will be included as scheduling permits. Liz is also able to do class visits this semester if desired. Please email her directly to set up class visits.
Liz Howard is a poet, editor, and teacher. Her work explores Anishinaabe ways of knowing, cosmology, ecology, and the philosophy and neuroscience of consciousness. Her first collection, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her second collection, Letters in a Bruised Cosmos, was shortlisted for the 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Trillium 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 has completed creative writing and Indigenous arts residencies at McGill University, University of Calgary, UBC Okanagan, Douglas College, Sheridan College, and The Capilano Review. She is the 2022 Jake MacDonald Writer-in-Residence at the University of Winnipeg and the 2023 Shaftesbury Creative Writer-in-Residence at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. She has taught creative writing at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the University of Toronto. She will be joining Concordia University’s Department of English as an Assistant Professor of creative writing in June 2023. She is of mixed settler and Anishinaabe heritage. Born and raised on Treaty 9 territory in Northern Ontario, she currently lives in Toronto.
(Photo credit: Ralph Kolewe)
About Jake MacDonald
The Jake MacDonald Writer-in-Residence Program honours the memory of the beloved Manitoba writer Jake MacDonald, who passed away suddenly and too soon on January 30, 2020. Through the creative thinking and great generosity of Jake’s family, friends, and peers, this program makes possible the kind of work Jake believed in: mentoring emerging writers, bringing readings and other literary events to the public, and providing support for working writers to concentrate on their projects in process. Erín Moure will be the first writer to hold the Jake MacDonald residency, in 2021.
Jake MacDonald wrote short stories, tall tales, novels, essays, newspaper and magazine articles, and books of non-fiction, and he was beginning to make his mark as a playwright as well. His best-known work is his memoir Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a Life in Shield Country, which recounts adventures from his life, especially his years spent living on a houseboat on the Winnipeg River near Minaki. That book won the prestigious national Rogers Non-Fiction Award and the Manitoba Book of the Year Award, and became a best-seller. Another popular Jake MacDonald book, Juliana and the Medicine Fish, is very different in genre, being a novel for young people, but it shares the same respect for nature and love of Canadian Shield country. Juliana and the Medicine Fish is a master work of story-telling, and was made into a very fine film. Jake’s debut play, The Cottage, premiered on the main stage of the Manitoba Theatre Centre in the spring of 2019 and shortly thereafter Jake was honoured with the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making a Mark award. The new residency at the University of Winnipeg is made possible by the Jake MacDonald Writers Fund, which began with a generous founding gift from Jake’s friend Angus Reid. For more information, see https://news.uwinnipeg.ca/uwinnipeg-announces-the-jake-macdonald-writers-fund/
Jake MacDonald (Photo courtesy of the family)