Aislinn Hunter

BFA (Victoria, B.C.), MFA (UBC), M.Sc. (Edinburgh), PhD (Edinburgh)
Aislinn Hunter
On leave
Surrey Campus: Fir Building, D330

AISLINN HUNTER is an award-winning novelist, poet and teacher and the author of eight highly-acclaimed books. Her first book of poetry Into the Early Hours was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and won the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. The Possible Past (poems) was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. Her first novel Stay was a Globe and Mail Top 100 book, a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award, and was made into a feature film starring Aidan Quinn and Taylor Schilling. Her second novel The World Before Us won the 2015 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Chatelaine Book Club pick and formed the basis of a song by Veda Hille and a dance performance choreographed by Anusha Fernando for the Chan Centre's 2016 Words in Motion series. Linger, Still her third book of poetry won the 2018 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her third novel The Certainties will be published in 2020 by Knopf, Random House. Before coming to KPU Aislinn taught as a sessional at The University of Victoria and worked on a contract basis for CBC Radio and the National Film Board.

Areas of Interest

I teach creative writing in multiple genres (ranging from first to fourth year) in the Spring semester. My specialties are fiction (short and long), poetry and creative nonfiction – especially the personal essay, lyric essay and cultural journalism.

 

Scholarly Work

  • CONFERENCE PAPERS
  • ‘One Thing After The Other’: In Defence of Listing the Material, presented at the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) Conference, Vancouver, BC, May 2014.
  • ‘The Brontës, Materiality and Resonance: Three Ways of Looking.’ Presented at the ‘Re-Visioning the Brontës’ Conference at the University of Leeds, January 2013.
  • ‘Ever Yours’: Victorian Writers’ Handwriting and the Indelible Self. Presented at the BAVS ‘Composition and Decomposition’ Conference at the University of Birmingham, September 2011.
  • ‘Enigmatic Witness: Pet Dogs as Beloved Objects in the Victorian Era.’ Presented at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference ‘Speaking Nature’ at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, April 2011.
  • ‘Reaching Out: Beloved Objects, Resonance, and the Necessity of Touch in Object Transformation.’ The ‘Mediated Memory Symposium’, Glasgow University, January 2010.
  • ‘Of things for ever speaking’: The Lock of Hair in Victorian Culture. Presented at the Bodies and Things: Victorian Literature and the Matter of Culture Conference at Oxford University, September 2009.
  • Phenomenological Resonance: Presence and Absence in Beloved Things. Presented at the BAVS Victorian Feeling: Touch, Bodies, Emotions Conference at the University of Leicester, August 2008.
  • ‘And So, she Appears’: Women Writers in Contemporary / Historical Poetic Space. Presented at the Adapting the Nineteenth Century: Revisiting, Revising and Rewriting the Past Conference at the University of Wales, Lampeter, August 2008.
  • Enigmatic Things: Books as Objects in Two Eras. Presented at the Matter and Materiality Conference at the University of York, July 2007.
  • ‘You carved your name and I carved mine’: Presence and Absence in Postmodern Intertextual Citation. Presented at the Invisibilities: Absence and Presence in Cultural Texts and Images Conference at the University of Dundee, June 2007.
  • Explorations of Interior Space: The Victorian Library as a Little Theatre. Presented at the House to Home Conference at Warwick University, March 2007.
  • Objects as Portals in Contemporary Fiction, presented as a guest lecture at Macquarie University, Australia, September 2006.
  • Translating Narrative: The Appropriation of Ghosts and The Irish Gothic, presented at The Association of Writing Programs Conference (Texas), 2006.
  • The Construct of Memory, presented at The Association of Writing Programs Conference (Vancouver), 2005 and published as A Ragged Pen: Essays on Poetry and Memory by Gaspereau Press.