Current Mentors
Tamara Faith Berger writes fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. She is the author of Lie With Me (2001), The Way of the Whore (2004), (republished together by Coach House Books as Little Cat in 2013), Maidenhead (2012) and Kuntalini (2016). Her fifth book, Queen Solomon, was published by Coach House Books in October 2018. Maidenhead was nominated for a Trillium Book Award and it won the Believer Book Award. Her work has been published in Apology, Canadian Art, Taddle Creek and Canadian Notes and Queries. She has a BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.
Lynn Crosbie, Montreal born, is a cultural critic, the author of four books of poetry: Miss Pamela's Mercy, VillainElle, Pearl and a collection of new and selected work, Queen Rat. Her recent collection of poems, Pearl, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She is also the author of the controversial book, Paul's Case and the editor of The Girl Wants To and Click. She lives in Toronto, and has a PhD in English literature (on the work of Anne Sexton). Crosbie teaches at the Ontario College of Art and the University of Toronto.
Nathan Englander finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Nathan Englander is a celebrated voice in American literature who draws upon his Orthodox Jewish upbringing in both his writing and lectures. Englander's debut, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, became an international bestseller and earned him the PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award. His latest work is kaddish.com, a novel that brilliantly highlights his wit and humor.
Anne Michaels is a Canadian poet and novelist who won the Commonwealth Prize as well as the Trillium Book Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction (later the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction) and who is known internationally for the beauty and precision of her language and the depth of her philosophical themes. Her book Correspondences (2013), an elegy to her father with illustrations by Bernice Eisenstein, was short-listed for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Michael Redhill is a Giller Prize-winning novelist, poet and playwright. He is the author of the novels Consolation, longlisted for Man Booker Prize; Martin Sloane, a finalist for the Giller Prize; and most recently, Bellevue Square, winner of the 2017 Giller Prize. He has written a novel for young adults, four collections of poetry and two plays, including the internationally celebrated Goodness. He also writes a series of crime novels under the name Inger Ash Wolfe. He lives in Toronto, ON.
Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books, and the short story collection HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE, winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN America Open Book Award, out now with Little, Brown (U.S.), McClelland & Stewart (Canada), and Bloomsbury (U.K.), available in French, with foreign rights sold in China, Korea, Poland, and Turkey. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, and NOON. She has also written book reviews for The New York Times, and edited the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry (2021) and The Griffin Poetry Prize (2021). She is known for her PowerPoint videos on Zoom about writing, most recently one titled "I Am Not That Interesting." Currently, she is working on her first novel. She was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, and was raised, and educated at public schools, in Toronto.
Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang is a poet, children’s writer and teacher. Her books of poetry include Status Update (2013), which was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award, and Sweet Devilry (2011), which won the Gerald Lampert Award. Her new book of poetry, Grappling Hook, is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press. She was shortlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019 and longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2018. Tsiang’s poetry has won the Arc Magazine Reader’s Choice for Poem of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Forward Awards, Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse contest, the Bliss Carmen Poetry Award, and the Re-lit Award. Her work has also been featured in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry and many other anthologies. She is the editor of the poetry collection, Desperately Seeking Susans (2013).
Phoebe Wang is a first-generation Chinese Canadian writer and educator. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Admission Requirements (McClelland & Stewart, 2017), which was nominated for the Trillium Book Award, and Waking Occupations, (McClelland & Stewart, 2022). She was the Writer-In-Residence at the University of New Brunswick in 2021-2022, and currently is a poetry editor with The Fiddlehead and Brick Books. She works at OCAD University as a Writing and Learning Consultant and mentors in the University of Toronto MA in Creative Writing program. Her work employs a lyric mode and is concerned with the interrelation of place, time and identity. She seeks to heal the rifts of colonization with language.
Former Mentors
André Alexis
Ken Babstock
Dionne Brand
Trevor Cole
Kevin Connolly
Claudia Dey
Charles Foran
Camilla Gibb
Katherine Govier
Barbara Gowdy
Sheila Heti
Liz Howard
Kateri Lanthier
Guy Maddin
Pasha Malla
Anne Michaels
Michael Redhill
Leon Rooke
Rebecca Rosenblum
Karen Solie
Carmine Starnino
Susan Swan
Miriam Toews
Jane Urquhart
Phoebe Wang
Michael Winter
Authors who have served as Adjunct Faculty (Mentors) in the MA CRW Program
Margaret Atwood
Linda Griffiths
Goldberry Long
Lee Maracle
David Adams Richards