Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library
Anne Simpson has lived in Nova Scotia for seventeen years. She has worked as an English teacher in Nigeria with CUSO, as a construction worker in the Yukon , and as a L'Arche volunteer in France. Upon graduation from Queen's University (BA, MA, BEd) and from the Ontario College of Art (AOCA), she managed PR for Ongwanada Hospital, and started a literacy program for a school board in Kingston, Ontario.
After working as the coordinator of the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University for a number of years, she now concentrates on her writing. Her first collection of poetry, Light Falls Through You ( McClelland & Stewart, 2000) was awarded the Gerald Lampert Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 2001. This was followed by a novel, Canterbury Beach (Penguin) in 2001. Her most recent book of poetry, Loop (McClelland & Stewart, 2004) was a finalist for the Governor-General's Award for Poetry in 2003 and awarded the Griffin Prize for Poetry in 2004. She is currently finishing a second novel, Falling , to be published in 2007, as well as a third collection of poetry to be published in 2008.
She has worked previously as a Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Brunswick (2002-2003) and as Artist-in-Residence at the Medical Humanities Program at Dalhousie University (2004). She has taught writing at the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts. As well, she is one of two coordinators for the Great Blue Heron Writing Workshop at St. Francis Xavier University, which is held in July each year.
"Writers work in isolation," she says. "So they need to touch base with other writers and find out what they're doing right and what they can improve in their writing. This is why having a Writer-in-Residence program in a regional library outside Halifax is such a great idea. Writers in northeastern Nova Scotia can make use of it. And it's unique in Nova Scotia; our regional library should be celebrated for undertaking this program."
