Executive Board and Staff / Comité directeur et personnel
CLC Executive Committee
Sarah Wylie Krotz (CLC Director) - krotz@ualberta.ca
Marie Carrière (Past Director) - carriere@ualberta.ca
Jordan Abel - jabel@ualberta.ca
Courtenay Chan - cchan3@ualberta.ca
Danielle Fuller - dfuller@ualberta.ca
Stephanie Oliver - ssoliver@ualberta.ca
Jason Purcell - jason@glassbookshop.com
Kristine Smitka - smitka@ualberta.ca
Sarah Wylie Krotz (Director)
Sarah Wylie Krotz is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies, where she researches the spatial and ecological dimensions of literature. Her book Mapping with Words: Anglo-Canadian Literary Cartographies, 1789-1916 (UTorontoP, 2018) explores the ways that writers negotiated and made sense of the shifting landscapes of early Canada, particularly in relation to Indigenous sovereignties and dispossession and environmental change. She co-edited a book called The Politics of the Canoe (UManitobaP, 2021) with Bruce Erickson (Geography, University of Manitoba), an interdisciplinary collection of essays on the multivalenced political meanings of this significant national icon. Her recent articles, such as “A Natural History of Loss: Reading ‘The Last Bison’ in the Age of Loneliness” (Canadian Poetry, 2019) and “The Affective Geography of Wild Rice: A Literary Study” (SCL/ELC 2017, winner of the Herb Wyile Prize), work to deepen our understanding of Canada’s complex literary ecologies, and the possibilities they open up for rethinking our relationships with the land.
Marie Carrière (Past Director)
Marie Carrière (BA Ottawa, MA Queen’s, PhD Toronto) teaches Canadian, Indigenous, and Québécois literatures in the Department of English and Film Studies. She was director of the CLC from 2008 to 2020, and is now Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Arts. Her 2020 monograph, Metafeminist Practices in Canada, is published with McGill-Queen’s University Press, and her current research explores ecofeminist interventions in sustainability and anthropocene theory. She has published oft-cited articles and books including Médée protéiforme (UOttawaP, 2012) and Writing in the Feminine in French and English Canada: A Question of Ethics (UTorontoP, 2002), as well as edited volumes and special journal issues including All the Feels: Affect and Writing in Canada/Tous les sens: Affect et écriture au Canada (with Ursula Mathis-Moser and Kit Dobson, UAlbertaP, 2020) and Regenerations: Canadian Women’s Writing/Régénérations: Écritures de femmes au Canada (with Patricia Demers, UAlbertaP, 2013), among several other volumes. With Curtis Gillespie and Jason Purcell, she curated the award-winning critical anthology Ten Canadian Writers in Context (UAlbertaP, 2016). Her SSHRC-funded research has led to a number of publications in both English and French on migrant literatures in Canada and Québec, contemporary writing by women, the ethics of care, and feminist theory.
Jordan Abel
Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, Talonbooks, 2013 ), Un/inhabited (Talonbooks, 2020) and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, Talonbooks, 2016). Abel’s latest project NISHGA (McClelland & Stewart, 2021) is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence and the often invisible intergenerational impact of residential schools. Abel recently completed a PhD at Simon Fraser University, and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing.
Danielle Fuller
Danielle Fuller joined the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta in 2018. Before that, she worked at the University of Birmingham, UK for twenty-one years. Her PhD was in Canadian Literature, and her first book was Writing the Everyday: Women's Textual Communities in Atlantic Canada (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2004). Although most of Danielle's research is now within the field of contemporary book culture studies, more specifically, in cultures of reading, she maintains a strong interest in the production, circulation and reception of Canadian literatures within and outside Canada as part of that work. Other publications include, with DeNel Rehberg Sedo, Reading Beyond the Book: The Social Practices of Contemporary Literary Culture (Routledge, 2013). During her years in Birmingham, Danielle spent eight years on the Board of Directors for Writing West Midlands, the literature development agency for that region, two years on the Board of HEARTH Arts, and also collaborated with several writers, game designers and arts organizations on both research-creation projects and events.
Jason Purcell
Jason Purcell is a writer based in amiskwacîwâskahikan. Their debut collection of poetry, SWOLLENING, was published in 2022 by Arsenal Pulp Press. Alongside Matthew Stepanic, they run Glass Bookshop, an independent bookstore that strives to centre queer and racialized writers, uplift independent publishers, and support local arts communities.
Photo credit: Zachary Ayotte
Kristine Smitka
Kristine Smitka is an Associate Lecturer and the First-Year English Coordinator in the Department of English and Film Studies. With a focus on Canadian literature and book history, she has published on Marshall McLuhan’s academic and artistic networks, Sheila Watson’s little-known fascination with photography, and McClelland & Stewart’s publication scheme for Leonard Cohen’s controversial novel Beautiful Losers. While she has taught a wide range of classes at the University of Alberta, including narrative theory, popular culture, and Canadian literature, she predominantly teaches writing-intensive classes at the first-year level.
CLC Staff
Nicole Brandsma, Business Manager - cdnlit@ualberta.ca
Nicole Brandsma is a PhD graduate of the Department of English and Film Studies and continues to teach in the department as a contract instructor. Her doctoral work examined the way that settler writers in northwestern British Columbia situate their sense of place on the unceded territories of First Nations, in the Skeena watershed, and in the communities along the Highway of Tears. In particular, her dissertation, "Uprooting and Re-Routing a Settled Sense of Place: Reading Settler Literary Cartographies of Northwestern British Columbia," focuses primarily on the work of writer, poet, and scholar Sarah de Leeuw.
Megan Gannett, Communications & Research Officer - gannett@ualberta.ca
Megan Gannett is a queer settler writer and outdoor experiential educator. Raised in Edmonton, she studied English and Native Studies as an undergraduate at the University of Alberta, returning in 2018 to complete her MA in English. She has spent many glorious days outside, leading hikes and canoe trips for youth, or else making up stories while snowshoeing. Alongside her role at the CLC, Megan is a TA in the Transition Year Program. Her writing has been published in The Antigonish Review, CV2, The Goose, and elsewhere.
Meaghan Sych, Research Assistant - mesych@ualberta.ca
Meaghan Sych is a Masters student with the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. She completed her undergraduate degree here a few years ago and also has an after-degree in Psychology. She lives with her three children, husband, and two cats in Edmonton and loves going for long walks in the river valley.