Thesis Supervisors
The following course instructors: Canisia Lubrin, Judith Thompson, Carrianne Leung, Catherine Bush, Michael Winter, Kevin Connolly, and Kyo Maclear (all included below) are potential Thesis Advisors and their full bios appear on the Course Instructors page. The Associated Faculty listed below are also available for thesis advising.
A full list of University of Guelph Faculty serving as Second Readers and Committee Chairs for the CW MFA, can be found at the bottom of this page.
Thesis Supervisors
Catherine Bush
Professor, Teaching and Supervising Faculty
Catherine Bush is the author of five novels, including Blaze Island (2020), a Globe & Mail Best Book. Her work has been critically acclaimed, published internationally and shortlisted for literary awards. Accusation (2013) was one of NOW magazine’s Best Ten Books of 2013 and a Canada Reads Top 40 pick. Minus Time (1993), her first novel, was shortlisted for the Books in Canada/SmithBooks First Novel Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. Her second novel, The Rules of Engagement (2000) was a national bestseller and chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and one of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of the Year. Her third novel, Claire’s Head (2004), was shortlisted for Ontario’s Trillium Award and was a Globe & Mail Best Book.
See full bio under Course Instructors
Margaret Christakos
Supervising Associated Faculty
Margaret Christakos is a widely published Canadian poet with nine collections of poetry, including Excessive Love Prostheses (2002, ReLit winner), Sooner (2005) and What Stirs (2008), both Pat Lowther Award nominees, and Welling (2010, a Globe100 Book). Her most recent poetry is Multitudes (2013). She has also published a novel, Charisma (2001, a Trillium nominee) and an intergenre memoir, Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies. She received an Excellence in Teaching Award from U of T (2009), including for her work curating and facilitating Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon, and has been appointed Writer in Residence at the U. of Windsor, at Western and (in 2017/18) at the U. of Alberta. She holds a B.F.A. Visual Arts (York, 1985), and M.A. Education (U of T, 1995). margaretchristakos.com
Kevin Connolly
Teaching and Supervising Associated Faculty
Kevin Connolly is a poet, journalist, and editor. He is the author of five collections of poetry: Happyland (2002), Drift (2005), which was the winner of the Trillium Book Award, Revolver (2008), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, and Xiphoid Process (2017).
Connolly has served as an editor for ECW Press, House of Anansi, Coach House Books, and McClelland and Stewart. He lives in Toronto with his partner, writer Gil Adamson. Connolly runs the poetry imprint at House of Anansi.
See also: Course Instructors
Camilla Gibb
Supervising Associated Faculty
Camilla Gibb is the author of five acclaimed novels—Mouthing the Words, The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life, Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement and The Relatives, as well as the bestselling memoir This is Happy. Camilla has been the recipient of the Trillium Book Award, the City of Toronto Book Award and the CBC Canadian Literary Award and has been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the RBC Taylor Prize. She has a Ph.D. from Oxford University and has been mentoring graduate creative writing students for the past 15 years.
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
Supervising Associated Faculty
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the bestselling author of the novels All The Broken Things, Perfecting and The Nettle Spinner and the short fiction collection Way Up. Her latest novel All The Broken Things was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award and longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads 2016. The Nettle Spinner was a finalist for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the ReLit Award. Way Up won a Danuta Gleed Award. Kathryn's fiction has appeared in Granta, The Walrus, 7X7 LA, Significant Objects, and Storyville, where it won The Sidney Prize for Fiction. Kathryn teaches creative writing at various institutions, including Colorado College and the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Toronto.
Carrianne Leung
Professor, Teaching and Supervising Faculty
Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Equity Studies from OISE/University of Toronto. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo, published by Inanna Publications was shortlisted for the 2014 Toronto Book Awards. Her collection of linked stories, That Time I Loved You, was released in 2018 by HarperCollins and in 2019 in the US by Liveright Publishing. It received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, and was named as one of the Best Books of 2018 by CBC, That Time I Loved You was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Awards 2019, long listed for Canada Reads 2019 and was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019. Leung’s work has also appeared in the Puritan, Ricepaper, the Globe and Mail, Room, Prairie Fire and Open Book Ontario. Her third book titled, The After will be released by Harper Collins Canada in 2024.
See also: Course Instructors
Canisia Lubrin
Professor, Teaching and Supervising Faculty
Canisia Lubrin is an acclaimed poet, editor and writer. Her writings explore ideas of social justice and the limits and possibilities of art, form, and language. Her books include the story collection, Code Noir (Knopf, 2023). Her first book Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017) was named a CBC Best Book. Her second book, The Dyzgraphxst (M & S, 2020) won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry and the overall Literature prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Derek Walcott Prize. That same year, she was awarded the Canada Council’s Joseph S. Stauffer prize for literary achievement and the Windham-Campbell prize for a body of work. Among other honours, her writing was finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and Trillium Book Award for Poetry.
See full bio under Course Instructors
Kyo Maclear
Teaching and Supervising Associated Faculty
Kyo Maclear is an essayist, novelist, editor and children's author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages, published in over twenty-five countries, optioned for theatre and television, and garnered nominations from the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Governor General's Literary Awards, the TD Canadian Children's Literature Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and the National Magazine Awards. Her nonfiction books include the hybrid memoir Birds Art Life (2017), winner of the Trillium Book Award, and Unearthing (Knopf and Scribner, 2023). She holds an MA (Cultural Studies and Education/OISE, University of Toronto) and a PhD (Environmental Humanities/York University).
See also: Course Instructors
Shani Mootoo
Supervising Associated Faculty
Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and grew up in Trinidad. She holds an MA in English from the University of Guelph, writes fiction and poetry and is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited locally and internationally. Mootoo’s critically acclaimed novels include Polar Vortex (Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist), Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (Lambda Literary Award shortlist, Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist), Valmiki’s Daughter (Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist), He Drown She in The Sea (Dublin IMPAC longlist) and Cereus Blooms at Night (Giller Prize shortlist, Booker Prize longlist). She is also the author of the poetry collection The Predicament of Or, and the short story collection, Out on Main Street. Mootoo is a recipient of the James Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Award. She lives in Southern Ontario.
Hoa Nguyen
Supervising Associated Faculty
Hoa Nguyen is author of five books of poetry including Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008 and Violet Energy Ingots which was nominated for a Griffin poetry prize. Her most recent book, released in 2021, is a poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post-“Fall-of-Saigon” with verse biography featuring the poet's mother, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-women Vietnamese circus troupe. Her work has been featured in Granta, PEN American Center, Boston Review, The Best Canadian Poetryseries, The Walrus, The New York Times, and the Academy of American Poets; she has performed and lectured at numerous institutions, including Princeton University, the Bagley Wright Lecture series, Bard College, Banff, Poet’s House, and Brown University. Born in the Mekong Delta and raised and educated in the United States, Hoa lives in Toronto with her family.
Michael Redhill
Supervising Associated Faculty
Michael Redhill’s most recent novel, Bellevue Square, won the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize. His previous novel, Consolation, was long-listed for the Man Booker prize and won the Toronto Book Award. His first novel, Martin Sloane, was a finalist for the Giller Prize and winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Novel (Canada/Carribbean). He is also the author of Fidelity, a collection of short stories and four poetry collections. As a playwright, his most recent works are Goodness and Building Jerusalem, winner of the 2000 Dora Award for Outstanding New Play and finalist for the 2001 Governor General’s Award. He also writes mysteries under the name Inger Ash Wolfe. Redhill lives and works in Toronto.
Shyam Selvadurai
Teaching and Supervising Associated Faculty
Shyam Selvadurai's first novel Funny Boy, won the W.H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award in the US. He is the author of Cinnamon Gardens and Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, and the editor of an anthology, Story-wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. His books have been published in the US, the UK and India, and published in translation in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey and Israel. His third, The Hungry Ghosts, was published in 2013 in Canada, India and Sri Lanka. Shyam wrote the screenplay of his first novel Funny Boy along with the award-winning Deepa Mehta, who also directed the film. The film was released in 2021 on CBC Gem in Canada and Netflix in the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Shyam’s new novel Mansion of the Moon, a historical novel about the Buddha’s wife, will be released by Knopf in 2022.
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Supervising Associated Faculty
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, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN/America Open Book Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, NOON, and other places.
Judith Thompson
Professor, Teaching and Supervising Faculty
Playwright, director, actor, dramaturge, artistic director of RARE theatre and Professor of theatre, Judith Thompson is the author of 17 published and produced plays, including The Crackwalker, I Am Yours, Lion in the Streets, Perfect Pie, Lion in the Streets, Palace of the End, Who Killed Snow White, and Elektra in Bosnia. Many of her works have been translated and produced all over the world. She has also authored two feature films, Perfect Pie and Lost and Delirious, as well as several made-for-TV movies, including the award-winning Life With Billy and Turning to Stone, and numerous radio plays. She is the founder of RARE theatre.
See full bio under Course Instructors
Ayelet Tsabari
Supervising Associated Faculty
Ayelet Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and has been published internationally. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Foreign Policy, Maclean's, and The National Post, has won a National Magazine Award, and was shortlisted for CBC Short Story Prize. She’s the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language and has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing and The University of King’s College MFA. Her novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted is forthcoming with HarperCollins in 2024.
Blain Watters
Teaching and Supervising Associated Faculty
Blain Watters is a screenwriter best known for Sleeping Giant, which premiered at Cannes and went on to film festivals around the world like Munich, Palm Springs, TIFF, Zurich and others, and was nominated for Best Feature at the Canadian Screen Awards. After graduating from the Canadian Film Center, Blain won a Banff Fellowship and landed in the Lost Girl story room. He wrote the first season of Netflix’s Between and then produced, directed and wrote the live-off-the-floor-musical web-series Haunters which has over a million views and has won awards at fests around the world.
See also: Course Instructors
Michael Winter
Teaching and Supervising Associated Faculty
Michael Winter has published two collections of stories, five novels, and one work of non-fiction. He has won the CBC short story contest, the Winterset Award, and received the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. He has served as a juror for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, held the Jack McClelland Writer-in-Residence position at the University of Toronto, and been both an editor and mentor to a wide range of writers, from community literacy workshops to MFA creative writing programs. He currently lives in Toronto.
See also: Course Instructors
Thesis Defence Committee Second Readers
Second Readers marked with an asterisk below also have the capacity to serve as Committee Chairs.
Paul Barrett*
Assistant Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Canadian literature, critical race studies, digital humanities
Julie Cairnie*
Professor and Acting Graduate Coordinator, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Southern African literature (South African and Zimbabwean), land crisis and the crisis of childhood through Zimbabwean literature and other cultural texts, Canadian Indigenous-Settler relationships, postcolonial sport
Elaine Chang*
Associate Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Critical studies of race, ethnicity, and gender; contemporary cultural theory; 20th and 21st-century anglophone prose fiction; Asian North American cultural studies; film and media cultures
Mark Fortier*
Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Shakespeare; Law and Literature; Theatre Theory
Stephen Henighan
Professor, Spanish and Hispanic Studies, School of Languages and Literatures
Areas of Specialization: 20th & 21st Century Spanish American Fiction, Lusophone African Literature
Lawrence Hill
Faculty, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Black history in Canada and around the world, slavery and freedom, human rights, migration, the search for home, mixed-race identity, blood as a marker of individual and collective identity, and the experiences of refugees.
Troy Hourie*
Assistant Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: scenography/performance design, installation art, mediated performance creation, augmented realities, puppetry, storytelling, art history, architecture and theatre design; current work revolves around the themes of wonder, immersion, spectatorship and intermediality
Mark Lipton
Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Digital knowledge production, Culture, Communication, Media, Technology, Education, Teaching, Learning, Pedagogy, English Education, Writing Across the Curriculum, Literacy, Media Literacy, Activism, Educational Technology, Digital Divides, Social Inclusion, Digital Storytelling, Research-Creation, Social Media, Digital Humanities, Social Justice, Confronting Sexism, Health, Wellness, Digital Policy Literacy, Privacy, Surveillance, Visual Communication, Bio-Hacking, Bio-Art, Perception, Performance, Identity, Queer Theory, LGBTQ+ Youth, Camp
Danny O’Quinn*
Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: European relations with the Ottoman Empire, British-India, and on various trans-Atlantic topics are part of the ongoing re-evaluation of British imperial culture. His research on theatre and sociability, historical analysis of race, class, sexuality, and gender, genealogies of present norms regarding the body and social relations.
Pablo Ramirez*
Associate Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Law and Literature, Latinx Literature and Cultural Production, Memory Studies, Nineteenth-Century Literature of the Supernatural and the Occult, Creative Writing
Jennifer Schacker*
Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: folk narrative and history of folklore study; fairy tale and theatre; children's literature and culture; material culture, craft, costume
Thesis Defence Committee Chairs
Second Readers marked with an asterisk above also have the capacity to serve as Committee Chairs.
Gregor Campbell
Assistant Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: American Literature, Literary Theory, Media Studies, Harlem Renaissance, Postmodernism
Michelle Elleray
Associate Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Victorian literature, particularly in relation to: literature of empire, the South Pacific, children's literature, missionary culture, and ecocriticism
Judith Thompson
Professor, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing
Areas of Specialization: Playwrighting, Devising, Acting, Theatre Creation
Judith Thompson is a widely recognized playwright, director, screenwriter, actor and artistic director/producer, with work that has garnered national and international awards and has been widely studied and praised by critics throughout her career.
See full bio under Course Instructors
