Gillian Jerome

Gillian Jerome is a Canadian poet, essayist, editor and instructor.[1][2] She won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2009 and the ReLit Award for Poetry in 2010.[3][4][5] Jerome is a co-founder of Canadian Women In Literary Arts (CWILA),[6][7][8] and also serves as the poetry editor for Geist.[9] She is a lecturer in literature at the University of British Columbia[10] and also runs writing workshops at the Post 750 in downtown Vancouver.[1][10]

Gillian Jerome
BornBritish Columbia, Canada
EducationMasters of Fine Arts in Writing, University of Arizona
GenrePoet, essayist and author
Website
Official website

Her work has been published by Geist, Canadian Literature, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain and the Colorado Review.[11][12]

Personal life and education

Jerome was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.[1] She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Victoria[1] and a Masters of Fine Arts in writing at the University of Arizona where she studied American Literature.[1] She has two children from her marriage to fellow writer Brad Cran. The two were divorced in 2014.[13]

Career

Jerome has taught poetry and literature at the University of British Columbia, the University of Arizona and Douglas College. She co-edited an oral history project in the Downtown Eastside, in association with Pivot Legal Society who started the community-based photography project Hope In Shadows. She has published poems, essays, book reviews and two books of her own,[14] Jerome has participated for many years in judging the Poetry in Voice contest and the Vancouver Writers Festival.[15] She teaches life writing workshops at the Post at 750 for people who don't consider themselves professional writers but have something meaningful to say.[16] She has also participated in the UBC's Robson Reading Series,[17] as well as an event that was part of the literary series Open Word: Readings and Ideas at the University of Victoria, where she read from her past works and poems she was working on at the time.[18]

Jerome's work touches on many subjects including sexuality, friendship, community, ecological exigencies, and the local, particularly the people and places of her East and South Vancouver neighbourhoods.[19]

Canadian women in literary arts
Main article: Canadian Women in Literary Arts (CWILA)

Gillian Jerome founded CWILA in 2012 as a response to what she saw as unequal representations of gender and race in literary communities in Canada.[20][21] CWILA produces an annual count of participating publications and their number of books or reviews written by women, as well as how many women authors they have reviewed. CWILA strives to quantify the barriers that exist for women in literary culture,[22] Their findings aim at enabling discussion and inspiration for action in the literary community in Canada. The non-profit organization works to instill motivation in the literary and review community to create equal coverage and representation.[23][24][25][20][26] Jerome left her position at Canadian Women in Literary Arts in 2015 to focus on teaching and writing.

Geist magazine

Geist is a Canadian magazine that brings together fiction and non-fiction, poetry, essays, comics, reviews and photography.[27] The magazine is explained as a mix of ideas and culture.[28] Jerome taught writing workshops at Geist and is a participating editor and writer for the magazine.[29] Jerome has published 14 pieces with Geist.[30] including poetry, essays and book reviews. The themes that come up in her writing include feminism, motherhood, environmentalism, women's rights, housing politics, social justice and community.[31][19]

Hope in Shadows

In 2003 Pivot Legal Society started Hope in the Shadows, a photo contest in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Pivot Legal Society asked participants to photograph things that were important to them, with the intent that this would give the participants a voice and recognition for their efforts.[32][33][2] The initial contest led to the creation of a yearly calendar project where each year's winners are asked to share their story along with their image. This calendar is released in October of every year, and contains the winning photos of the participants chosen by local artists in the city.[34] The calendars are sold through Megaphones vendor program which hires 200 people from low-income backgrounds each season,[35] each vendor keeps half of their sales. There have been 75,000 calendars sold since 2003.[33]

In 2008 the book Hope in Shadows by Jerome and Brad Cran was released through Arsenal Pulp Press and the Pivot Legal Society that compiled 35 different stories attached to winning images from the photo contest.[11] Their book took the stories associated with the winning photographs and expanded them with interviews of the photographers from the photo contest. They wrote about the traumas, abuse and mental illness but also friendship, laughter and love, which were reoccurring themes in the stories of the images. The stories capture the lives of First Nations people who survived residential schools, individuals coping with addictions, and others overcoming loss of loved ones.[36] Hope in Shadows was published in 2009[37] and soon after this date the calendar sold 5000 more copies.[33] Hope in Shadows won the City of Vancouver Book Award, was shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, and was longlisted for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature.[38][39][40]

University of British Columbia

Jerome has been teaching narrative, research writing and literature in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia since 2004.

EVENT magazine

Jerome was an editor and author for the EVENT magazine, a literary magazine that has been publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction for 46 years in Western Canada. Event is published by Douglas College, a public post-secondary institution in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada.[41] Jerome started working as Event's Poetry editor in 2010.[42]

Awards

Works
  • Midsummer (2008)[44]:202–203
  • Hope in the Shadows (2008) Arsenal Pulp Press ISBN 978-1551522388
  • Red Nest (2009) Harbour Publishing [44]:208[45]

References
  1. "About". Gillian Jerome. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  2. L'ABBÉ, SONNET (February 26, 2010). "From Antarctica to the downtown east side, from the heart to the mind". Globe and Mail. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  3. "Michael Kenyon, Stuart Ross, and Gillian Jerome take home ReLit Awards". Quill and Quire. October 21, 2010. Retrieved March 29, 2018.
  4. "Event Poetry and Prose Masthead". Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  5. Books, Brick. "Congratulations to Michael Kenyon, Stuart Ross and Gillian Jerome – winners of the ReLit Awards". www.brickbooks.ca. Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  6. "CWILA Board of Directors". cwila.com. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  7. Moss, Laura. "Guy-Guys, CWILA, and Going Down the Hall to the Archives". Canadian Literature. Retrieved March 29, 2018.
  8. LEDERMAN, MARSHA (October 24, 2012). "Canada's Orange Prize: Why we created an award just for female writers". Retrieved April 5, 2018.
  9. "Masthead | EVENT". www.eventmagazine.ca. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  10. "Gillian Jerome | UBC Experts Guide". experts.news.ubc.ca. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  11. "Gillian Jerome". Poetry Center. January 28, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
  12. "New anthology of poems by women launched". Vancouver Sun. April 5, 2013. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  13. Dick, Terence (January 1, 2004). "The Breeders: How to Reproduce without Losing your Cool". Broken Pencil. Archived from the original on April 4, 2018. Retrieved April 4, 2018 – via HighBeam Research.
  14. "The Malahat Review". www.malahatreview.ca. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  15. "Writers Festival writing contest winners announced". Vancouver Sun. January 12, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  16. "45 things to do in Metro Vancouver on Sunday, June 4". Georgia Straight Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  17. "Robson Reading Series celebrates National Poetry Month – BC Book Prizes". bcbookprizes.ca. Retrieved March 12, 2018.
  18. indivisionnetwork.com. "Open Word: Readings and Ideas with Gillian Jerome: @ University of Victoria, Fine Arts Building, Room 209 – Jan 22, 2014 Victoria BC". artsvictoria.ca. Retrieved March 22, 2018.
  19. McNeille, Kevin (2015). "10 We jimmied the radio" : Gillian Jerome, Brad Cran, and the Lyric in Public". In Bart Vautour; Erin Wunker; Travis V. Mason; Christl Verduyn (eds.). Public Poetics: Critical Issues in Canadian Poetry and Poetics (revised ed.). Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 978-1771120494.
  20. "4/4: The Spectacle of Absence - Gillian Jerome on the CWILA Count | The Capilano Review". www.thecapilanoreview.ca. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
  21. "The CWILA Numbers: An Introduction by Gillian Jerome". cwila.com. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
  22. "2014 CWILA Count Methods & Results". cwila.com. Retrieved March 9, 2018.
  23. Lang, Alison (Spring 2016). "The Magazine of The Writers Union of Canada" (PDF). Making It Better. 44: 26.
  24. "David Gilmour: U of T professors distance themselves from comments | Toronto Star". thestar.com. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  25. "The Malahat Review". www.malahatreview.ca. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  26. "Faster Feminism Spotlight: Canadian Women in the Literary Arts". Hook & Eye. June 18, 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  27. "Geist – MagsBC". magsbc.com. Retrieved March 30, 2018.
  28. "About Geist". Geist.com. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  29. "Gillian Jerome". Geist.com. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  30. Jerome, Gillian (July 18, 2014). "What to Expect When You're Expecting". Geist.com. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  31. "Three UBC authors to check out at Vancouver Writers Fest". The Ubyssey. October 17, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  32. "View of The Line Between Methodology and Praxis". journals.sfu.ca. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  33. "Hope in Shadows". Retrieved March 12, 2018.
  34. Natalie, Robinson (2012). "Picturing social inclusion: photography and identity in Downtown Eastside Vancouver". etheses.bham.ac.uk. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  35. "Hope in Shadows". Megaphone. Retrieved March 12, 2018.
  36. "Hope in Shadows". Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
  37. "Finding Hope in Shadows in the Downtown Eastside". Georgia Straight Vancouver's News & Entertainment Weekly. May 14, 2008. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  38. "Hope in Shadows Longlisted for George Ryga Award (Aug. 2009)". Arsenal Pulp Press. Retrieved March 12, 2018.
  39. "BC Book Prizes". www.bcbookprizes.ca. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  40. Ramlo, Erin Janette (2014). "Clusters of voices : dialogic literary social activism in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, 2000 - 2010". Open Library UBC. University of British Columbia.
  41. "Event Magazine – Douglas College". www.douglascollege.ca. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  42. "Masthead | EVENT". www.eventmagazine.ca. Retrieved March 13, 2018.
  43. "2008 Book Award Winners and Finalists". City of Vancouver Book Awards. Retrieved March 8, 2018.
  44. Vautour, Bart; Wunker, Erin; Mason, Travis V.; Verduyn, Christl (June 18, 2015). Public Poetics: Critical Issues in Canadian Poetry and Poetics. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 9781771120494.
  45. Wall, Emily (2010). "Tasting this Place". Canadian Literature. 206: 175–176.
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