Liza Potvin

• B.A. (Calgary)
• M.A. (Queen's)
• Ph.D. (McMaster)

Feminist pedagogy and feminist theory, film and media studies, Canadian literature, Renaissance poetry, nineteenth-and twentieth-century French literature, creative writing.

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION:   I have a scholarly interest in Canadian writers of drama, poetry and fiction, and I just completed a paper on Canadian performance poetry that will be published soon in Germany.  I also pursue studies in 17th century poetry.  Most of my work has been influenced by feminist criticism.

BIOGRAPHY:  I was born in Moselle, France in and raised there and in Denmark, the U.S., and Canada, studying at Odense Universitetet, Université de Toulon, University of Montana, University of Calgary (B.A. 1983), Queen’s University (M.A. 1984), and McMaster University (Ph.D., 1991).  My poems and stories have appeared in journals such as Quarry Magazine (Best Story, 2000), Zygote Magazine (First Place, Fiction 2001), A Room of One’s Own, CV II, The Grist Mill, LitWit, Crash, and in anthologies like Outskirts: Women Writing from Small Places, Visions and Echoes: Patterns of Transcendence Among Canadian Women Writers, and Islands West:  Stories from the Coast.  I won the Edna Staebler Creative Nonfiction Award for White Lies (for my mother) (NeWest, 1992).  Other books include The Traveller’s Hat (Raincoast, 2003) and Cougarman Percy Dewar (Trafford, 2005). Some of my essays have appeared in Commonwealth Essays and Studies, The Ohio Review, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, The Antigonish Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Feminism and Education, Canadian Poetry, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, Canadian Literature, Atlantis, and Studies in Canadian Literature.  I am a regular reviewer of new Canadian Literature for Event Magazine.  My first choreographed play Wings was produced in 2008.

Currently I am working on a novel based on the life of the German painter Paula Modersohn Becker