Anne Simpson

Anne Simpson was UNB’s twenty-first writer-in-residence during the 2002-2003 academic year. Simpson comes to UNB as writer-in-residence from St. Francis Xavier University, where she co-ordinated the writing centre. She commuted to Fredericton weekly from her home, and family, in Antigonish. Her first book of poetry Light Falls Through You (2000) won the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her first novel, Canterbury Beach, was published only a year later and was nominated for the Thomas Head Randall Award in 2002. She was awarded the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize for her poetry collection Loop.

She gave a reading at Memorial Hall on Spetember 18^th of 2003, and another to end her generous tenure as writer-in-residence on the 9^th of April, 2003. She spent the last week of January 2003 as a temporary writer-in-residence for the Universit de Moncton, and she gave a fiction writing workshop at the Moncton Public Library during that time. She also spent time at UNBSJ from March 17^th to March 21^st to conduct workshops and meet with local writers in Saint John.

In a 2008 interview with Valerie Poulin, Simpson provided a number of tips to writers seeking advice from resident writers; Simpson recommended emerging writers send a limited amount of unfinished work so that she could find places where the writer could improve, and also advised that writers send texts that they have been working on for some time, so that they may have already seen the work’s weakness and strengths by the time they meet with her.

Anne Simpson was preceded by John Steffler and succeeded by Ken McGoogan.

Notes:

Source(s):

UA Case 191; Section 2; Anne Simpson