Catherine Owen (Canadian Author)

Photo of Catherine Owen by Paul Saturley

Catherine Owen is a Canadian writer and musician from Vancouver, British Columbia. She currently resides in New Westminster by the Fraser River.

Early life and education

She earned a bachelor's degree in 1999 and master's degree in English Literature in 2001 from Simon Fraser University.

Musical career

She is the singer/bassist for the metal band Grieve (formerly Medea).^[1] She also created INHUMAN (2002-2010) and Helgrind (2008-2009) with her co-composer Chris Matzigkeit (1981-2010).

Poetry

She is the author of ten collections of poetry, among them Designated Mourner (ECW Press, 2014), Trobairitz (Anvil Press 2012), Seeing Lessons (Wolsak & Wynn 2010) and Frenzy (Anvil Press 2009), which also won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry in 2010.^[2] Her poems are included in several recent anthologies such as Forcefield: 77 Women Poets of BC (Mothertongue Press, 2013) and This Place a Stranger: Canadian Women Travelling Alone (Caitlin Press, 2014). Stories have appeared in Urban Graffiti, Memewar Magazine, Lit n Image (US) and TORONTO Quarterly.

Catherine Owen's work has been reviewed by Quill and Quire,^[3] Urban Graffiti,^[4] The Bull Calf Review,^[5] Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review,^[6][7] while also being the subject for the academic paper entitled, Catherine Owen’s “Dodo” as Animal Rights Theory by Terry Trowbridge, published in Ariel: A Review of International English Literature from the University of Calgary.She has also published a volume of essays and memoirs called Catalysts: Confrontations with the Muse (Wolsak & Wynn, 2012), edited a collection of interviews and writing practices known as The Other 23 and a Half Hours or Everything You Wanted To Know That Your MFA Didn't Teach You (Wolsak & Wynn, 2015) and has a compilation of short stories/sliver fictions coming out from Caitlin Press in late 2016.

Awards

1. Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry in 2010
2. Also nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award (1999) and the BC Book Prize (2002), along with the George Ryga Award and the Re-lit Prize (2006).

Bibliography

1. The Other 23 & a Half Hours: Or Everything You Wanted to Know that Your MFA Didn’t Teach You (2015) from Wolsak and Wynn (ISBN 9781928088004)
2. Designated Mourner (2014) from ECW Press (ISBN 9781770412033)
3. Catalysts: Confrontations with the muse (2012) from Wolsak and Wynn (ISBN 9781894987592)
4. Seeing Lessons (2010) from Wolsak and Wynn.
5. Frenzy (2009) from Anvil Press (ISBN 9781897535004)
6. Dog (2008) from Mansfield Press (ISBN 9781894469340)
7. Fyre (2007) from Above Ground Press
8. Shall: Ghazals (2006) from Wolsak and Wynn (ISBN 189498708X)
9. Cusp/Detritus: An Experiment in Alleyways (2006) from Anvil Press (ISBN 1895636744)
10. The Wrecks of Eden (2002) from Wolsak and Wynn (ISBN 0919897800)
11. Somatic: The Life & Work of Egon Schiele (1998) from Wolsak and Wynn.

References

1. "Interview with Medea". doom-metal.com. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
2. "Alberta Literary Awards Finalists and Winners". Writers' Guild of Alberta. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
3. Quill and Quire. Quill and Quire http://www.quillandquire.com/book-author/catherine-owen/. Retrieved 20 August 2015. Missing or empty |title= (help)
4. McCawley, Mark. "The Other 23 & a Half Hours by Catherine Owen review by Mark McCawley". Urban Graffiti. Urban Graffiti. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
5. Cameron, Laura; Gélinas-Faucher, Claudine; Roussel, Renaud. "Seeing Lessons by Catherine Owen Review". The Bull Calf: Reviews of Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Criticism. The Bull Calf: Reviews of Fiction, Poetry, and Literary Criticism. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
6. Johnstone, Tiffany. "Language to Live By". Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review. Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
7. Shatford, Darlene. "Varied Voices". Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review. Retrieved 20 August 2015.