BA (Hons) (U. Calgary); MA (U. Alberta); MFA (Vind); PhD (York U.)
Dr. Turnbull is the author of Sonic Booms: Making Music in an Oil Town. She holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from York University and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College. She has taught pop music and culture courses at Toronto Metropolitan University, and was a faculty mentor in the Creative Nonfiction MFA program at King’s College. In 2021, Dr. Turnbull co-founded the writing collective Penizen, whose anthology Bad Artist was published by Touchwood/Brindle & Glass in 2024. She is currently at work on a short story collection.
Professor Turnbull is a writer and editor and has worked in the music and broadcast industries. A contributor to Chatelaine, Maisonneuve, The Walrus, The National Post, and Hazlitt, Dr. Turnbull has also written for The Puritan, The Conversation, Atlantic Books Today and No Depression. Dr. Turnbull is also the former editor of Canadian Folk Music and former editorial assistant for MUSICultures, and has served on multiple music industry and academic society boards.
Dr. Turnbull has received Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Access Copyright Foundation and Chalmers Development grants for her writing. She has also won arts presenting and publishing grants, including those from Alberta Foundation for the Arts, SOCAN, FACTOR and the City of Calgary. Her music industry work includes venue programming, music criticism and festival work. She was the co-founder of the popular Wide Cut Weekend roots music festival in Calgary.
Music and pop culture, biography, women in pop music, labour, class, debt, urban geography, women’s health, intersections of fiction and nonfiction, experimental forms
