The Writer's Studio - Poetry, SFU | The Writer's Studio - Fiction, SFU
Chelene Knight is the author of five books in multiple genres, including the acclaimed novel Junie (Book*hug 2022), winner of the 2023 Vancouver Book Award, long-listed for the inaugural Carol Shields Fiction Prize, long-listed for CBC Canada Reads, and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Prize for LGBTQ fiction. International translation rights for Junie have been acquired. Junie has been optioned for a feature film.
Her essays and journalism have appeared in the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Writer’s Digest, Toronto Star, and numerous Canadian and American literary journals. Her work is anthologized in Making Room, Love Me True, Sustenance, The Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award. Her poem “Welwitschia” received the 2020 CV2 Editor’s Choice Award, and she was shortlisted for PRISM’s 2021 Short Forms Contest. In 2018, acclaimed author David Chariandy selected her as a Writer’s Trust Rising Star.
Knight has served as managing editor at Room magazine, festival director for Vancouver’s Growing Room Festival, and worked as a literary agent with the Transatlantic Agency. She has taught poetry at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. She is the founder of Breathing Space Creative Studio, where she guides writers to build intentional and sustainable creative practices and careers.
A graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio in multiple streams, Knight is a certified coach and mindfulness facilitator. She is currently at work on two new novels.
Junie
Dear Current Occupant
“Hogan’s Alley“, Subterrain Magazine
“in the moment’s elation in the moon’s light, I dream“, Augur Magazine
“What is author care, and how can I support it?“, Writer’s Digest