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Department of English Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
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Writer-in-Residence Program

The Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) Writer-in-Residence program is aimed at supplementing existing Creative Writing courses by providing students with access to a working, professional writer for feedback and support. Additionally, the program is dedicated to engaging the broader community by developing partnerships with North York libraries, schools and community organizations to connect our Writer-in-Residence with off-campus populations.

On this page:

How the Program Works

Meet our Writer-in-Residence

Past Writers-in-Residence

Quick Links

How the Program Works

York University's Department of English hosts a Writer-in-Residence for each of the Fall and Winter terms.

Writers-in-Residence are esteemed authors of poetry, fiction and nonfiction who spend their time equally between service to the York community and working on their own book-length creative projects.

Four meetings per week are available by appointment. Submissions of a maximum of three poems or twelve pages of prose are due at least ten days prior to each meeting.

Writers-in-Residence are available for manuscript consultations, which might include editorial feedback and suggestions toward publication with students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the broader York community.

They will also host four public-facing events per term, such as readings, workshops, craft talks, panel discussions, seminars, classroom visits, field trips, among other activities that share their expertise and knowledge as a working writer in Canada.

Book a Manuscript Consultation

Meet our Winter 2026 Writer-in-Residence: Kate Cayley

Kate Cayley is a fiction writer, poet, and playwright. She has published two short story collections, three collections of poetry, and a novel, Property (Coach House Books, 2025). Her plays have been performed in Canada, the US and the UK. She has won the Trillium Book Award, the Mitchell Prize for Poetry, and an O. Henry Prize, and been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, among other awards. She was a playwright in residence with Tarragon Theatre for many years, and wrote two plays for Tarragon, After Akhmatova and The Bakelite Masterpiece. She has taught writing and mentored emerging writers at the University of Toronto, Sheridan College, the Humber School for Writers, McMaster University, and the University of Guelph MFA program. She is a frequent writing collaborator with immersive company Zuppa Theatre, most recently on The Archive of Missing Things and This Is Nowhere, and her writing has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Best Canadian Stories, Brick, Electric Literature, Joyland, The New Quarterly and North American Review. She lives in Toronto with her wife and their children.

Questions?


Feel free to contact Pasha Malla at pmalla@yorku.ca, Associate Professor, Creative Writing with any questions about the LA&PS Writer-in-Residence program.

Contact

Past Writers-in-Residence

Carleigh Baker is an author and teacher of Métis and European descent. Born and raised on Stó:lō territory, she currently lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy ̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səl̓ilwəta. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings, won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Indigenous Voices Award for fiction. Her short stories and essays have been translated into several languages and anthologized in North America and Europe. Her new story collection, Last Woman, has been nominated for the 2025 Jim Deva Prize for writing that provokes. Visit her column, Bizarre Celebrations, at Hazlitt.net.

As a researcher Baker is most interested in how fiction can be used to address the climate crisis. She was a 2019/20 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, where she sometimes teaches creative writing.

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He’s written four books, including the bestselling novels Moon of the Crusted Snow, published in 2018, and its sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, published in 2023. He graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002 and worked at the CBC as a video journalist and radio host until 2020, when he left to focus on his literary career. In addition to his writing endeavours, Waubgeshig is an eclectic public speaker, delivering keynote addresses and workshops, engaging in interviews, and contributing to various panels at literary festivals and conferences. He speaks on creative writing and oral storytelling, contemporary Anishinaabe culture and matters, Indigenous representation in arts and media, and more. He lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and three sons.

Sadiqa de Meijer's books include Leaving Howe Island (Governor General's Award Finalist 2014), The Outer Wards (Raymond Souster Award finalist 2020), and alfabet/alphabet (Governor General's Award Winner 2021). Her work, which often explores landscape, families, inner lives, and the long wakes of colonialism and migration, has received the CBC Poetry Prize, Arc's Poem of the Year Award, the Jean Royce Fellowship, and other honours. It has been published internationally in Poetry Magazine, the Walrus, Brick Magazine, Poetry London, and anthologized in the Best Canadian Poetry, the Best Canadian Essays, and the Dutch Turing Prize series. Her essay collection In The Field is forthcoming in 2025. She is the current Poet Laureate of Katarokwi/Kingston.

Emma Healey is a writer from Toronto. Her most recent book, Best Young Woman Job Book: A Memoir, was published by Random House Canada in 2022. It was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail and Wired Magazine as well as CBC Radio's Q. It was also shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, and longlisted for the Leacock Medal.

Her first collection of poetry, Begin with the End in Mind, was published by ARP Books in 2012. Her second, Stereoblind, was published by House of Anansi in 2018. Her essays and criticism have been featured in places like n+1, Vulture, the Globe and Mail (where she was resident poetry critic for a few years), the LA Review of Books, Canadian Art, the Toronto Star, the National Post, the FADER, Hazlitt, the Hairpin, Real Life, Toronto Life, the Walrus, and many, many more. 

Shyam Selvadurai was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1965. He came to Canada with his family at the age of nineteen. He has studied creative writing and theatre and has a BFA from York University, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Funny Boy, his first novel, was published to acclaim in 1994 and won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award and in the US the Lambda Literary Award. It was also named a Notable Book by the American Library Association, and was translated into 8 languages.

His second novel, Cinnamon Gardens, was published in Canada, the UK, the US and translated into 9 languages. It was shortlisted for Canada’s Trillium Award, as well as the Aloa Literary Award in Denmark and the Premio Internazionale Riccardo Bacchelli in Italy.

Shyam is the editor of an anthology, Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction, published in Canada and the US. His novel for young adults, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award in the US, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award and Silver Winner in the Young Adult Category of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award.

His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Time Magazine, Toronto Life, Walrus Magazine, Enroute Magazine, The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. He served as Festival Curator for the Galle Literary Festival for 2 years. His fourth novel, The Hungry Ghosts, was published April 2, 2013 in Canada, India and Sri Lanka. It was shortlisted for Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award for Fiction and longlisted for the DSC South Asia Literature Prize. His latest work is a comprehensive anthology of Sri Lankan literature, Many Roads Through Paradise.

Shyam co- wrote the screenplay for his first novel Funny Boy, for which he won the Canadian Screen Award and the New York Cinema Independent Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Shyam’s new novel Mansion of the Moon is a historical novel about the Buddha’s wife, Yasodhara.

In 2016, Shyam had the interesting honour of having a spider named after him: Brignolia shyami, a small goblin spider.

Karen is the author of five collections of poetry. Her third, Pigeon (Anansi, 2009), won the Griffin Poetry Prize, Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Pat Lowther Award. A volume of selected and new poems, The Living Option, was published in the UK in 2013, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (Anansi, FSG, 2015) was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, and her most recent collection, The Caiplie Caves (Anansi, FSG, Picador, 2019), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and Derek Walcott Prize.  

Her work has been translated into seven languages and has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the US, the UK, Europe and Australia, including in the sixth edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. She has taught writing at universities and writing programs across Canada and the UK. She was the 2022 Holloway Visiting Poet and Lecturer for the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a member of the creative writing Faculty at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.