Chandra Mayor, photo credit: Lindsey Seller
WINNIPEG, MB – The University of Winnipeg’s Department of English, Faculty of Arts, is proud to announce one of Winnipeg’s strongest voices, Chandra Mayor as UWinnipeg’s ninth Carol Shields Writer-in-Residence, from January through April, 2014.
The residency includes two speaking engagements that are free and open to the public. Mayor will be doing a Reading on Thursday, January 23, at 7:00 pm. in Room 2M70, UWinnipeg; and presenting The 2014 Carol Shields Distinguished Lecture on Thursday, March 13, at 7:00 pm Convocation Hall, UWinnipeg. Her topic will be Be-witched, Bothered, Be-wild(ered): Creating Story to Be-come Together.
“One of the beautiful things about this residency is that it creates a rare space for writers – the accomplished and the aspiring – to share their emerging stories and poems with an experienced writer,” expressed Mayor. “I’m looking forward to meeting with all of Winnipeg’s writers and storytellers and sharing conversation, offering feedback, and giving back some of the careful attention and advice that others shared with me.”
Mayor is a graduate of UWinnipeg. She was named Most Promising Manitoba Writer early in her career. She has gone on to receive numerous literary honours for her poetry and fiction. Her poetry collection August Witch was nominated for four Manitoba book awards, and won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award. Her novel Cherry was nominated for the Margaret Laurence Award and won the Carol Shields Award. She was the regional winner of CBC Radio’s Poetry Face-Off in 2006 and 2007. More recently, her short story collection All the Pretty Girls was honoured with a Lambda Award. Mayor’s work has appeared in anthologies such as Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, Between Interruptions: 30 Women tell the Truth about Motherhood, Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets, Exposed, and Post-Prairie.
Mayor has worked in radio and film, and as a craft-based artist. She has served as the Writer-in-Residence at the Winnipeg Public Library, worked with the journals CV2 and Prairie Fire, taught creative writing courses and workshops, and performed readings of her work at festivals, venues, and universities across the country.
Mayor will have an office in the English department, where writers and emerging writers in the community are invited to meet with her for a free consultation about their writing. Please call 204.786.9283 to book an appointment.
Carol Shields was known for cultivating emerging writers, and for mentoring students and members of the writing community. The Carol Shields Writer-in-Residence Program continues this legacy which was established in 2005. Mayor’s residency has been made possible by the Shields family and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Check out her CBC profile.
