two new chapbooks, the uAlberta writer-in-residence (online) showcase, an interview + an above/ground press (zoom) conversation,

So, ryan fitzpatrick interviewed me across those early days of the pandemic, a selection of such is now available online via his MODEL Press as a free pdf download (check out further titles here, of course), in case such intrigues. As well, I've two recent chapbooks through above/ground press: an excerpt of my work-in-progress poetry manuscript, Origin Stories, in which I responded across 2025 to Benjamin Niespodziany's weekly "Sunday poem + prompt" substack, and an excerpt of "the green notebook," a prose writing and reading journal composed across a full calendar year (a number of which I'd been posting-as-excerpts across my substack). Watch, also, as I've got forthcoming chapbooks through Broke Press and Subpress, which is pretty cool.

I'm doing two online events over the next little bit. This Friday evening I'm part of the online Writer-in-Residence 50th Anniversary Alumni Showcase (well, online unless you are in Banff, Alberta): May 15, 2026 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM, Clvb 33, St. Julien Way, Banff, AB and online. REGISTER HERE. "The Writer-in-Residence program in the Department of English and Film Studies is delighted to invite you to attend our 50th anniversary Writer-in-Residence Alumni Showcase at the Banff Centre's Clvb 33. All are welcome to attend either in person or virtually. There will be readings from Thomas Wharton, Fred Wah, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cody Caetano, JR Carpenter, rob mclennan, Daphne Marlatt, Jana Pruden, Hiromi Goto, and Marilyn Dumont." 

A week or so later, American poet and translator Cole Swensen will be interviewing myself, Jennifer Baker and Misha Solomon as part of "Publishing in-Transit: above/ground press," a whole conversation on and around above/ground through Brooklyn Rail. Wednesday, May 20, 2026 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific, via Zoom. REGISTER HERE. Oh, what an exciting week or so of things!

U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Minister Faust (2014-15)

For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers here]. See the link to the entire series of interviews (updating weekly) here.

Minister Faust is a novelist, print/radio/television journalist, blogger, sketch comedy writer, video game writer, playwright, and poet. He also taught high school and junior high English literature and composition for a decade.

He was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta during the 2014-15 academic year.

Q: When you began your residency, you’d already produced fiction, plays, stage writing and sketch comedy, as well as video games. Where did you feel you were in your writing? What did the opportunity mean to you?

A: I was comfortable with my writing and I appreciated the opportunity to teach people, which I had done for ten years.

Q: What do you feel your time as writer-in-residence at University of Alberta allowed you to explore in your work? Were you working on anything specific while there, or was it more of an opportunity to expand your repertoire?

A: I had the chance to plan and research several projects, and spent a great deal of time working with local writers on meeting their goals, as well as promoting local artists through the Authorpaloozas and launching MF GALAXY to talk with writers about the business and craft of writing.

Q: Were there any encounters that stood out?

Everyone stood out. One person I’d like to mention Tweeted that he was grateful for all the help I’d given him on his story, which had gotten published. My advice was, “Don’t change a word.”

Q: Was this your first residency?

A: Yes.

Q: The bulk of writers-in-residence at the University of Alberta have been writers from outside the province. As an Edmonton-based writer, how did it feel to be acknowledged locally through the position?

A: I strongly appreciated the opportunity to work with local writers to help them build their skills and their reach, and to publicize the outstanding literary community we have here.

U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Karen Solie (2004-5)

For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers here]. See the link to the entire series of interviews (updating weekly) here.

Karen Solie’s most recent collection of poems, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, was published last year by House of Anansi in Canada, and in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A volume of selected and new poems, The Living Option, was published in the U.K. in 2013.

She was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta during the 2004-5 academic year.

Q: When you began your residency, you were about to publish your second poetry collection. Where did you feel you were in your writing? What did the opportunity mean to you?

A: Because the publication of my first book came as a surprise, the experience of the second was different. I imagine it is for most writers. Modern and Normal was written with an element of nervousness – hope/doubt/curiosity/determination/fear – over whether I could write not just something else, but something better. Though I’m working on my 5th manuscript now, and the experience is the same. In terms of how it feels, where I am in my writing now is more or less where I was then. In some ways I’m more sure of myself; in others, less.

U of A gave me my first writer-in-residence job, in fact my first job as a writer, and I was in equal parts grateful, exhilarated, and intimidated. I learned a great deal about mentoring at a very important time to learn it, and a number of fascinating people came through my office. I know I learned more from the job, from the writers I worked with, than they did from me. It was a weird time, too. I lived in an apartment hotel on the edge of downtown that was its own strange planet. Modern and Normal was edited there, and I also drafted work that ended up in Pigeon.

Q: What do you feel your time as writer-in-residence at University of Alberta allowed you to explore in your work? Were you working on anything specific while there, or was it more of an opportunity to expand your repertoire?

A: I haven’t until my current manuscript-in-progress embarked on the writing of a book or series of poems guided by a particular theme or subject. The handful of found poems in Modern and Normal came about not from a desire to write a series of found poems, but from a realization at some point that I’d accumulated a fair number of them. The task then was to reduce that number by half – two-thirds, probably – which was part of the editing I undertook in Edmonton. I was interested while working on that book to think through scenarios, references, details not as derived from personal anecdote. To supplement my store of figurative language, but also to refine, complicate, and vary how metaphor might operate. This risk in these statements is always that people will read the work with them in mind and think, “hmm, really”? Anyway, I read more and researched more. Tonal and rhetorical registers became a concern – their use and overuse. But all this developed pretty naturally. None of it was outlined as a plan to pursue.

The U of A position was a new experience, and as such made its way into what I was writing the way any new experience does. But it also afforded reading time, note-taking and thinking time, which is invaluable in its generally rarity. As mentioned, I did some new writing toward Pigeon while in Edmonton. The long(ish) prose piece “Archive” was drafted there, for one, inspired by my terror at walking across the High Level Bridge. I drafted many other poems that went nowhere, too. Got a few of those out of the way, which is part of it.

Q: Given the fact that you aren’t an Alberta writer, were you influenced at all by the landscape, or the writing or writers you interacted with while in Edmonton? What was your sense of the literary community?

A: Though not from Alberta, I am from southwest Saskatchewan, so know the prairies. I very much liked that I could drive home to the farm every other week or so throughout my tenure. It’s a six-hour drive, depending on weather, so in Canadian terms not bad. I appreciated being in the north-central part of the province for its differences in climate, wildlife, landscape, and for the proximity to the North Saskatchewan River. I love rivers, their disparate characters, and spent a lot of time in the river valley. I also visited Elk Island Park and was intimidated by some bison. The High Level Bridge ended up influencing me a great deal, if being influenced can mean being terrified by. I lived on the downtown side of the river and walked the bridge a few times a week to get to the university, sometimes in pretty bad weather. My parents’ ‘92 Crown Victoria would be frozen solid in my apartment building’s parking lot, and by the time I’d stepped out onto the trestle I’d gone too far to hike back downtown to the subway. It would have seemed – not like defeat, I’m okay with defeat – kind of crazy. The bridge became a sort of icon for me during my time there.

I met wonderful writers, participated in and attended some great events, but don’t think I can really characterize the literary community then. Eight months isn’t enough time to get a good handle on anything. And it was 12 years ago. One thing I remember very clearly is reading C.D. Wright for the first time in Audrey’s Books on Jasper Avenue. You never know when or where you’ll encounter the work that will change you.

Q: How did you engage with students and the community during your residency? Were there any encounters that stood out?

A: I remember I was chuffed to have an office with my name on the door, where people could come to see me. I probably met with more writers from the larger community than I did with students. A guy called from jail to talk about his poetry. And there was an older fellow, around 80, who wanted to write stories about his life to give to his children and grandchildren. Okay, I thought. But then his stories were fantastic, a blend of fact and fiction. He wrote about owning a racehorse, about learning to hunt. They were vivid and funny and frank, literary in the best way. I encouraged him to try publishing them, but I don’t think he was really interested in that. He was fun to talk to, too. It was a great lesson toward going into relationships with writers and their work with an open mind, and to respect what they want from the encounter. Which in no way means just patting them on the back. It was -- and still is; the lesson is ongoing -- about seeing beyond my own inclinations.

Q: Looking back on the experience now, how do you think it impacted upon your work?

A: My work, as I think of it, is teaching, mentoring, and editing as well as writing, and I learned a great deal about all of it during my tenure. I made mistakes in my interactions with writers then, and regret that they had to suffer my inexperience. Not that I don’t make mistakes still, I do all the time. But my first writer-in-residence position afforded me a practical knowledge of ways I needed to, and need to, improve. The job came at a crucial time financially, put the money panic on the back burner so I could attend to the writing panic of finishing edits on the second book, and it also afforded the luxury to start on the third. In that luxury, I felt a little more free to experiment, to take time to read. The curiosities I developed then persist to this day.

U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Erín Moure (2013-14)

For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers here]. Seethe link to the entire series of interviews (updating weekly) here.

Erín Moure by the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton. Photo by Karis Shearer.

Erín Moure is a poet and translator of poetry from French, Spanish, Galician and Portuguese. Her work has received the Governor General's Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and A.M. Klein Prize (twice) and been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize. Her Insecession, a biopoetics echoing Chus Pato, appeared in one book with Pato’s Secession, in Moure translation (BookThug, 2014). Her French/English play-poem Kapusta (Anansi, 2015), sequel to The Unmemntioable, was a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize and was a CBC Best Book of 2015. 2016 will see three new Moure translations from Galician and French: Flesh of Leviathan by Chus Pato (Omnidawn), New Leaves by Rosalía de Castro (Small Stations), and My Dinosaur by François Turcot (BookThug).

She was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta during the 2013-14 academic year.

Q: When you began your residency, you’d been publishing books for more than three decades. Where did you feel you were in your writing? What did the opportunity mean to you?

A: For me writing is always starting anew, as a beginner. Language always asks me to begin again. I don’t want to do what I did before.

I went to Edmonton very excited about spending time in English, and having time free of freelance work slogging (which largely conspires to make creative life impossible) to complete one poetic project (Kapusta, appeared from Anansi in 2015) of my own, and do a very complex and long translation of Brazilian Wilson Bueno’s work in Portunhol with Guaraní into English flecked with French and, I had hoped, Tsuu T’ina or another indigenous language of Alberta… that didn’t work out, and I decided to keep the Guaraní… but I did finish the translation and start trying to find a publisher. It will be out in the second half of 2017 from a US poetry press, but I won’t name it as I haven’t received the executed contract. I also wanted to spend those months with my father, whom I knew was near the end of his days and was in a seniors residence in Edmonton. He wanted to be part of my poetry life again too. Unfortunately for me (but fine for him, given his health), he died 10 days before the start of the residency; we were able to say goodbye and accompany each other, but the residency plan was altered.

Q: What do you feel your time as writer-in-residence at University of Alberta allowed you to explore in your work? Were you working on anything specific while there, or was it more of an opportunity to expand your repertoire?

A: It allowed me to be in Alberta to grieve my father, for sure. I was working on specific projects, and just trying to live more calmly and focus on them. I snowshoed by the river, and took self defense classes, made use of the gym and bike paths and all, and the library was a great resource. The department itself was in a bit of disarray as there were budget cutbacks at the university level and an offer of early retirement packages that year; as well, one of the key poetry people, Christine Stewart, was on sabbatical.

Q: How did you engage with students and the community during your residency?

A: Through my usual office hours, I found there was a large contingent from the community who came for advice on every imaginable project and genre, unlike at other university residencies where mainly students make appointments. As well, I met with and worked with many great folks from Modern Languages, both profs and students, and some students in creative writing, via the poetry translation seminar I led all year. They were a marvellous group. I visited Jenna Butler’s poetry class, the TYP classes, attended events in the History department, in Modern Languages, and in English. I was also invited to speak elsewhere in Alberta (besides the exchange with U of Calgary): I gave a class in the history of writing and thinking at the college in Maskwacis, the Cree community south of Edmonton, and a talk at the U of Lethbridge.

Q: What do you see as your biggest accomplishment while there? What had you been hoping to achieve?

A: For me, the highlights were my class visits doing workshops in the TYP classes — the Transitional Year Program for Indigenous students coming into the university for the first time. They really inspired me, both the students and the profs, and excited me by their desire to learn and not just to learn, but to change learning as we know it, change the university, grasp new ways of viewing learning. Also, the river was a highlight.

Q: Were you influenced at all by the landscape, or the writing or writers you interacted with while in Edmonton? What was your sense of the literary community?

A: The literary community in Edmonton is rich and varied and very welcoming in many ways; I would say I hung out more with the landscape and with the writing I was critiquing, and with my own projects which I desperately needed to work on! It was a renewal, for me. A luxury and and a fount of new energy. And I met folks I still keep in touch with, probably moreso than at other residencies. Had many great interactions with profs in the dept, such as Dianne Chisholm, Julie Rak, Keavy Martin. And because of the neighbourhood I was living in, and the fact that I did my grocery shopping on a bicycle and not in a car, I also had a lot of interesting conversations about the downside of the oil industry and the crises in mental health that people were living with on the streets. I met a lot of people who were ravaged, really, but also, strangely, full of hope for their day. I learned a lot.

Q: Given you are originally from Alberta (specifically, Calgary), was there any element of the position that felt like a return?

A: Being in Alberta was great. I grew up in Calgary decades ago, a different Calgary than the one that exists today. I have brothers in and near Edmonton, who are great guys, and my roots are definitely in the landscape of Alberta, those sounds, those trees, the river, the animals along the river. All these are my familiars, in a way, and kindling those relationships was vital to me. I felt close as well to both my parents, to their movements and voices, and to my grandmother. All of which really helped me work.

U of Alberta writers-in-residence interviews: Marina Endicott (2012-13)

For the sake of the fortieth anniversary of the writer-in-residence program (the longest lasting of its kind in Canada) at the University of Alberta, I have taken it upon myself to interview as many former University of Alberta writers-in-residence as possible [see the ongoing list of writers here]. See the link to the entire series of interviews (updating weekly) here.

Marina Endicott’s latest book, Close to Hugh, was long-listed for the Giller Prize and named one of CBC’s Best Books of 2015. Her last, The Little Shadows, was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for the Governor General’s award. Her novel Good to a Fault, a finalist for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a CBC Canada Reads book and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She teaches creative writing at the Banff Centre, U of T, and at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta.

She was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta during the 2012-13 academic year.

Q: When you began your residency, you’d been publishing books for about a decade. Where did you feel you were in your writing? What did the opportunity mean to you?

A: I’d published three novels, and was working on my fourth, Close to Hugh. I don’t know if at some point one feels steady and competent in the practice of writing novels—after writing each novel I think okay, I know how to write that one. But the next one is a giant mystery. The residency gave me a long vista of concentrated, dedicated time to figure out how to write Hugh. When I started in September I had a couple of early scenes written, but hadn’t shown them to anyone. Each September the program hosts a reading where the new WIR reads with the departing WIR. I read from those scenes, haltingly, even with some slight despair. Greg Hollingshead laughed at me afterwards. “That was interesting to watch,” he said. “You read, and you suffered, and you read, and you suffered…”

By the end of the residency I had a complete draft of Hugh—much faster than I’d ever managed to produce a first draft before. It was a great relief to read from the final scenes of Hugh at the introductory reading for Erin Mouré, who followed me as WIR. I guess somehow through the intervening year, I learned how to write this one.

Besides the practical assistance and the relief of completing a draft, it was an honour to sit in the fishbowl office (those windows, open to the atrium, display every short burst of typing and every session of sweet silent slack-jawed thought) and to join the ranks of writers I admire who have done this venerable residency, and will do it in future. 

Q: Given the fact that you weren’t an Alberta writer, were you influenced at all by the landscape, or the writing or writers you interacted with while in Edmonton? What was your sense of the literary community?

A: It’s funny—how do we define these things? I’ve lived in Alberta for the past 25 years, so I guess I’m an Alberta writer. But I came late to this country, and my thinking and experience formed elsewhere: in British Columbia, until I was six; in Nova Scotia, where I mostly grew up; in Ontario, where I went to school and began my adult life; in England, where I started to write seriously; in Saskatchewan, where I found my real career and met my husband, who shanghaied me to Alberta. I’ve been everywhere, man.

Because we lived first in Mayerthorpe, I was isolated from the Alberta literary community, which I don’t think I’ve ever really joined. My sense is that it’s disjointed, unlike Saskatchewan’s close-knit writing klatch. It seems to me that rather than the kind of labour union of writers that Saskatchewan created, in Alberta the community is looser, pockets of friends talking to each other and supporting one another. Nothing wrong with that. We want to work with our friends. My friends here have been the many great writers I worked with in the library residency I started in Cochrane, including Fred Stenson and Peter Oliva, and up in Edmonton my writing companions Lynn Coady, Jocelyn Brown, and Jacqueline Baker. I think I’ve moved along that shifting axis from extrovert far over to introvert, as maybe we tend to do as we age. Once I wanted a big community—now I work better if I mostly talk to a couple of people.

Q: Ah! I didn’t realize. I’d somehow had the impression you arrived in Edmonton for the position from Saskatchewan, and simply remained. You mention a library residency you founded in Cochrane: was this something founded before or after your time at University of Alberta?

A: Before—we were in Cochrane, just outside Calgary, for 11 years, until 2008. Longer than Peter or I had ever lived any place in our lives. Needing a job, I went to the local librarian and said I think you should have a writing program here, with a writer in residence. He was amenable, so I did the grant applications and got the program started and was the first WIR of many, including Peter Oliva, Fred Stenson and Peter Norman. I also ran a reading series in conjunction with the University of Calgary and Canada Council, with luminaries like Elizabeth Hay, Alastair MacLeod and Sheila Heti. Each reading paired a local writer with the visitor. My children grew up going to readings every week, and consequently refuse to go to a single one of mine these days. That’s okay, they’ve heard enough.

Q: How did you engage with students and the community during your residency? Were there any encounters that stood out?

A: The usual way: people came trooping along the hall and handed me their stuff; I read it with care and often with great pleasure, and then talked to them. All we can do, all that needs to be done, is to pay attention.

Encounters that stood out: a young military officer brought in a folder of remarkable poems; I read several really good short stories; and just last week I wrote a blurb for Lisa Lawrence, whose YA manuscript, about to be published by Orca, was one of the most honest and exciting manuscripts I read during my residency.

Q: Looking back on the experience now, how do you think it impacted upon your work?

A: One of the best things about this residency is that it demands nothing—no socializing or scheduling events or running anything, no administration at all. I sat in the fishbowl office and wrote my head off. When I had written myself out, I read other people’s work, trying to see what was best about it and how it could be better. A year of that is good for the mind and the soul, and I believe the quiet, concentrated time to think made Close to Hugh a better book. Like that lovely thing about the Duchess of Malfi, the residency stains the time past, and I hope it will continue to light the work to come.