About Linda Morra

Publicity Photos-170A leading scholar of archival theory and Canadian women’s writing, and a multiple award-winning instructor and researcher, I am currently a Full Professor of English at Bishop’s University in Quebec, where I teach Canadian and Indigenous Literatures. I was also the 2021-2022 Jack & Nancy Farley Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Simon Fraser University and the Klara Marie Faßbinder Guest Professor for Women and Gender Studies at Trier University.

I specialize in women’s archives, theories of affect and archives, and women’s writing in Canada. As recent examples, I address Jane Rule’s archive in my edited book, Moving Archives (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2020), which won the Gabrielle Roy Prize in English (2020). I co-wrote an article, “The Sound of a Silenced Letter,” about Souvankham Thammavongsa with Gregory Betts for Studies in Canadian Literature, and  reviewed Megan Gail Coles’ Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club for The Conversation and Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau’s Blue Bear Woman for Montreal Review of Books. Dr. Sarah Henzi and I co-edited On the Other Side(s) of 150 (2021), which won the Canadian Studies Network Prize for Best Co-Edited Collection of Essays (2021. with Dr. Sarah Henzi).

I was selected as the Designated Alternate for a Fulbright Research Chair in March 2020.  Prior to that, I was also awarded the 2016-2017 Craig Dobbin Chair of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland, for which I developed the Canada 150 conference, “Untold Stories of the Past 150 Years.” The conference was supported by a SSHRC Connection Grant (2017) and staged in April 2017 at UCD. On the Other Side(s) of 150, the book developed from this conference and co-edited with Dr. Sarah Henzi, was published in the spring of 2021 (WLUP). Prior to this, I was awarded a John A. Sproul Research Fellowship from Canadian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where I served as a Visiting Scholar in January 2016.

My books have been recognized with several distinctions, as finalists for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in English and the LAMBDA Prize. I have won several teaching awards, including the Departmental Teaching Award (2008-2009) and Best Professor of the Humanities (2007-2008, 2009-2010), and been nominated for several others, including Best Professor of the Humanities; the Teaching and Learning Award, College of Arts & Humanities, University College Dublin, Ireland (2017); and the William and Nancy Turner Teaching Award (2010-2011, 2018-2019, 2019-2020). At Bishop’s University, I was awarded the Faculty Evaluation Committee Merit Award for Research/Teaching in 2010 and again in 2013.

morra_podcast_cover_v5As President of the Quebec Writers’ Federation (2014-2016; 2017-2018),  I developed the Prize for Young Writers (inaugurated in 2017) and the re-staging of Turtle Island Reads (first created by Dr. Deanna Reder) to McGill University and CBC Radio. Turtle Island Reads was staged for the 4th time in April 2019 in Quebec. I am a Board Member for Guernica Press and the Coordinator of the Morris House Reading Series at Bishop’s University. I also conceived of and run the Student Writing Week/End in the Eastern Townships (SWEET) and organized the Literary Umbrella of Quebec (LUQ).

I currently live in Montreal, Quebec. You can hear me on my award-winning podcast about literature and authors in Canada, Getting Lit with Linda.

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 Photo credit: Nadia Zheng