Current Writers-in-Residence:
Melanie Little and Peter Norman

Melanie Little is an award-winning author and editor of fiction and non-fiction. Her debut collection of stories, Confidence, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and selected as a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Her historical novel-in-verse for young adults, The Apprentice’s Masterpiece, was a Canadian Library Association Honour Book, a gold medalist at the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and a White Raven selection for the International Youth Library in Munich. She is currently finishing a novel that draws on her experiences as an editor, and is writing her second collection of short stories.

Melanie has taught creative writing at Dalhousie University, the University of Alberta, and at workshops across Canada, and has been a writing mentor with Diaspora Dialogues and the Ontario Arts Council. As the inaugural editor of Calgary’s Freehand Books, she won the Lois Hole Award for Editorial Excellence from the Book Publishers Association of Alberta; subsequently, she served as Senior Editor of Canadian Fiction for House of Anansi Press. Books she has edited have won the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Fiction, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and have twice been finalists for Canada Reads. She and her husband, fellow writer and editor Peter Norman, have shared their trove of reference books in homes from Vancouver to Ottawa, Calgary, Halifax, and Edmonton, and are currently residents of the Lakeshore Village Artists’ Co-op in Etobicoke, Ontario.

Peter Norman is the author of four poetry collections and a novel. His first book, At the Gates of the Theme Park, was a finalist for the Trillium Poetry Book Award, and his novel, Emberton, was longlisted for the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. His poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in The Walrus, The Malahat Review, Pulp Literature, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. He has been selected for two editions of the annual Best Canadian Poetry series and shortlisted twice for the Montreal Poetry Prize.

 As a freelance editor, copy-editor, and proofreader, Peter has worked on more than two hundred books for eighteen publishers and imprints, including HarperCollins, Knopf Canada, and McClelland & Stewart; authors include Esi Edugyan, Adrienne Clarkson, Lawrence Hill, and Leonard Cohen. He has also worked as an editor or editorial consultant for magazines, media groups, and other clients, including Alberta Views, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is a past president of the Lakeshore Village Artists’ Co-op, where he lives with his wife, author and editor Melanie Little.