Joanna Lilley

Biography

Joanna Lilley's debut novel, Worry Stones, will be published in autumn 2018 by Ronsdale Press. She is also the author of the poetry collection, If There Were Roads (Turnstone Press), and the poetry collection, The Fleece Era (Brick Books), which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her book of short stories is called The Birthday Books (Hagios Press). Joanna has an MLitt in Creative Writing from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde and is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. She has received four Advanced Artist Awards from the Government of Yukon and support from the Emerging Northern Writers and Artists Fund, Cultural Industries Training Fund and Touring Artist Fund. Joanna is from the UK and now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

Samples

A poem for younger readers: Living in Canada There are no sweet shops here, or Tesco Expresses, in this small, northern town. People give directions by colours and shapes of buildings, as if none of the roads have names. The buildings are all made of wood and plastic, never stone or brick. Someone told mum and dad houses here are only built to last fifty years. Mum gets the car stuck in the snow in the driveway at least one a week and dad keeps driving right up to the traffic lights, which you don’t do in Canada. You stop way back at the line. It’s dangerous. People here think wearing fur is normal. The people I’ve met who kill animals in traps have been nice so far. I didn’t like being hugged by a woman in a wolf fur coat, though. The cafés here don’t know what vegetarian cheese is. It’s not written on the labels. Wherever I stand in this town I can see the mountains. The sunrises and sunsets here last longer than anywhere else I’ve ever been.

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