BA (Hons) (U. Calgary); MA (U. Alberta); MFA (Vind); PhD (York U.)
Gillian 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, Gillian co-founded the writing collective Penizen, whose anthology Bad Artist is forthcoming.
She 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, Gillian has also written for The Puritan, The Conversation, Atlantic Books Today and No Depression. Gillian 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.
Gillian is a Canada Council Award and Chalmers Development Grant recipient. Her music industry work includes venue programming, music criticism and festival work. She is 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
