Current Writer-in-Residence: Magpie Ulysses

Writer, Rabble Rouser, fancy talker; Magpie is a performance poet and storyteller who refuses to follow any one literary or oral tradition. Known for high impact performances which showcase visceral, often surrealist writings that extend from the everyday human experience into the depths of natural and inanimate worlds. Magpie is a queer, neurodivergent, activist, nature nerd, garden witch who started performing poems more than 25 years ago. She has travelled across North America performing spoken word poetry and engaging storytelling. For her work Magpie has earned multiple awards, and is recognized as a beloved veteran and organizer in the Canada wide communities of spoken word poetry and storytelling.

Magpie has spent much of the past two decades heavily involved in the arts, while living in and around BC, Alberta & Ontario. The past many years given to guiding a new human and more than a decade spent caring for a grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease have informed and guided her writing. Magpie’s latest works seek questions surrounding genetic memory, placemaking, grief, aging, our place in the natural world, survival, displacement, rebellion, late-stage capitalist nightmares and the imminent undoing of our species.