Eliza Robertson
Writer-in-residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House in April 2024.
Eliza Robertson‘s 2014 debut collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Short Story Prize, and selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Demi-Gods, was a Globe & Mail and National Post book of the year and the winner of the 2018 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize.
She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, where she received the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize. In addition to being shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and Journey Prize, Eliza’s stories have won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and 2017 Elizabeth Jolley Prize.
Originally from Vancouver Island, Eliza lives in Montreal.
Eliza Robertson lived and worked at Joy Kogawa House in April 2024 while continuing a novel-in-progress, When Women Were Waves. While living and working at Joy Kogawa House in April 2024, Eliza presented the following program:
Translating the Body
This writing workshop began by exploring passages from texts that worked with the body, including the ways our bodies could be sites of history, pain, trauma, disease, and discomfort, as well as pleasure, beauty, fertility, and strength.
After sharing and discussing these texts, the group was offered writing prompts to help reflect on what stories we told ourselves about our bodies and/or what stories other people had told us about our bodies.
We then worked with interactive tools and with further writing prompts to start untangling, rewriting, and reclaiming those narratives.
Held Sunday, April 28, 2 – 4pm, in the living room at Joy Kogawa House.
Latest Blog Postings by or about Eliza Robertson
New WIR and Poetry Events at Joy Kogawa House in April
About Eliza Eliza Robertson's 2014 debut collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Short Story Prize, and selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Demi-Gods, was a Globe &...