MA in the Field of Creative Writing Program Adjunct Faculty (Mentor) Biographies

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), Kuntalini (2016), Queen Solomon (2018) and Yara (2023). 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. 

Camilla Gibb has a BA in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies from the University of Toronto, and she completed her PhD in social anthropology at Oxford University in 1997. She spent two years at the University of Toronto as a postdoctoral research fellow before becoming a full-time writer. She is the author of four novels: Mouthing the Words (1999), The Petty Details of So-and-so’s Life (2002), Sweetness in the Belly (2005) and The Beauty of Humanity Movement (2011), and a memoir, This Is Happy (2016), as well as numerous short stories, articles and reviews. She was shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize in 2016, she won the Trillium Book Award in 2006, was a Giller Prize nominee in 2005, the winner of the City of Toronto Book Award in 2000 and the recipient of the CBC Canadian Literary Award for short fiction in 2001. Her books have been published in 18 countries and translated into 14 languages, and she was named by the jury of the prestigious Orange Prize as one of 21 writers to watch in the new century. She is currently the June Callwood Professor in Social Justice at Victoria College, University of Toronto.
Visit her website at: http://www.camillagibb.ca/

Anne Michaels' books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Lannan Award for Fiction and the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Americas. She is the recipient of honorary degrees, the Guggenheim Fellowship and many other honours. She has been shortlisted for the Governor-General's Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice shortlisted for the Giller Prize and twice longlisted for the IMPAC Award. Her novel, Fugitive Pieces, was adapted as a feature film. From 2015 to 2019, she was Toronto's Poet Laureate. Her new novel, Held, will be released in November 2023.

Hoa Nguyen is the author of several books including As Long As Trees Last, Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008, and Violet Energy Ingots which received a 2017 Griffin Prize nomination. Her fifth book of poems, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure was named a finalist for a Kingsley Tufts Award, National Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award and has garnered additional support from The Poetry Foundation, Library Journal, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her writing has been promoted by such outlets as Granta, Harper's Magazine, PEN American Center, CBC Books, Boston Review, The Best Canadian Poetry series, Poetry, The Walrus, and Pleiades. In 2019, she was nominated for a Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a prestigious international literary award often compared with the Nobel Prize in Literature. Hoa has more than twenty years’ experience teaching across genres in intimate workshops and large lectures in community, undergraduate, and graduate settings.

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. 

Rebecca Rosenblum is the author of two collections of short stories, Once and The Big Dream. Her stories have been short-listed for the Journey Prize, a National Magazine Award, and the Danuta Gleed Award; won the Metcalfe-Rooke Award; and been turned into a stage play and a short film. Her most recent book is the novel So Much Love, shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and the Trillium Prize and one of The Globe and Mail's, the National Post's, and Quill and Quire's Books of the Year in 2017.

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan, Canada. She is the author of five collections of poetry. Short Haul Engine (Brick Books, 2001) won the Dorothy Livesay Award and was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize. Modern and Normal (Brick Books, 2005) was shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry Prize. Pigeon (Anansi, 2009) won the Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize. The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (Anansi, FSG, 2014) was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. The Caiplie Caves (Anansi, Picador, 2019; FSG, 2020) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and Derek Walcott Prize. Her selected poems, The Living Option, published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books in 2013, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She has received the Latner Poetry Prize and the Canada Council for the Arts Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for an artist in mid-career. The 2021 Jack McClelland Writer in Residence for the University of Toronto, and the 2022 Holloway Visiting Poet for the University of California at Berkeley, she is currently a lecturer in creative writing with the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Carmine Starnino has published five collections of poetry, including This Way Out, which was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in 2009 and recently translated into French by Éditions Hashtag under the title Par Ici La Sortie. His most recent collection is Leviathan. His other books include The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry and Lazy Bastardism, a collection of essays on contemporary poetry. He has received numerous awards, including the CAA Prize for Poetry, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and the F.G. Bressani Prize, in addition to being shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Prize for the best first book of poetry.

Journalist, feminist, novelist, activist, teacher, Susan Swan’s impact on the Canadian literary and political scene has been far-reaching. She has retired from her position of Associate Professor of Humanities at York University and currently mentors creative writing students at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph. In 1999-2000, she was York’s Millennial Robarts Chair in Canadian Studies. As chair, she hosted the successful Millennial Wisdom Symposium in Toronto featuring artists and social scientists debating the ways the lessons of the past. As chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada (2007-2008) Swan brought in a new benefits deal for Canadian writers and self-employed Canadians in the arts.

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, I was born in Ottawa, the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe. I graduated with a B.A. in Honours English at York University and a M.A. in English and Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. Admission Requirements, my first collection of poetry, was published with McClelland and Stewart in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lambert Memorial Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and nominated for the Trillium Book Award. My second collection, Waking Occupations, appeared in Spring 2022 with McClelland and Stewart. My fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Brick Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The New Quarterly, What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, Refuse: CanLit in Ruins, and The Unpublished City, shortlisted for a Toronto Book Award. I co-edited The Unpublished City: Volume II, The Lived City. From 2021-2022 I served as Writer-In-Residence at the University of New Brunswick and have edited poetry with The Fiddlehead magazine and Brick Books. I am a mentor with Diaspora Dialogues and the University of Toronto Creative Writing MA program, and am currently a Writing and Learning Consultant for ELL students at OCAD University, where I have also been a sessional instructor in Creative Writing. I am currently working on a manuscript of creative nonfiction that navigates sailing and identity. 

Authors who have served as Past Mentors in the MA CRW Program