English

By Kate Hargreaves 

Courtney Gilmour (BA ’12) is a two-time Juno-nominated stand-up comedian, a voice on PAW Patrol and a recent addition to the cast of Trailer Park Boys.  

She built that career the hard way — starting with zero comedy experience on a Windsor stage she had no business being on. 

Famed children’s book writer Christopher Paul Curtis will be taking on the role of writer in residence at the University of Windsor this month.

The Michigan-born author, whose work includes numerous magazine and journal articles along with eight books — including three he penned in Leddy Library — will return to campus Friday, March 6, where he will kick off his month-long residency with the writer in residence’s inaugural reading.

Curtis’s first novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, was released in 1995 and brought him immediate and well-deserved recognition.

By Kate Hargreaves 

With children’s literature becoming a flashpoint for controversy in both the United States and Canada, the question of who is represented in stories for kids and how those stories are told appears more urgent than ever. 

An upcoming colloquium hosted by the University of Windsor department of English will focus on precarity in children’s literature, examining the ways in which marginalized identities are represented in texts for children. 

By Lindsay Charlton

Walking through the halls of Chrysler Hall North, you might hear the melodious notes of opera music alongside the click-clack of a typewriter ringing from a corner office as poet Gustave Morin gets to work on his latest piece.

The celebrated Windsor author has spent the last month in the University of Windsor’s creative writing department helping the next generation of writers hone their craft and sharing his insight and experience as the fall Pat Sturn writer-in-residence.

“I'm here to just give friendly advice,” Morin said.

By Lindsay Charlton

Combining literature with the culinary arts, students in this year’s Editing and Publishing Practicum courses are crafting The Poet’s Cookbook, the inaugural publication of the independent publisher Conspiracy Press.

“The Poet's Cookbook functions as an attempt to bring a human element into writing,” said English and creative writing student Regis Bogahalanda.

By Lindsay Charlton

Against the backdrop of the ongoing U.S.-Canada trade tensions, a University of Windsor poet penned a “border city love letter” inspired by the tensions and the people caught in the midst of it. 

The poem A Body of Water Running by fourth-year student Trina Das, earned a spot on the 2025 CBC Poetry Prize longlist. 

“Living in Windsor, right across the border, there’s all this political stuff going on, and we’re kind of ground zero for it because of how closely our economies are tied,” Das explained. 

By Kate Hargreaves

When professor of English and Creative Writing Nicole Markotić was selecting books for the department’s final graduate-level creative writing class, she knew she wanted to make a big splash. 

“We wanted a course objective that would both celebrate past achievements and project our current student cohort into their own literary futures,” she explains. 

By Lindsay Charlton

Acclaimed poet Marie Howe (BA 1974) was stunned to learn she had been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection New and Selected Poems.

“It was absolutely stunning and surprising that this happened,” she recalled. “I heard about the news from a friend who called me and said, ‘You won the Pulitzer.’ I didn’t believe it. For about three or four minutes, we went back and forth, and I told him, ‘Stop, that’s not even funny, don’t even say that.’”