From the Literary Review of Canada:
“At the end of the current academic year, one of Canada’s most quietly effective creative writing programs is losing its heart. Carolyn Smart has run the undergraduate courses at Queen’s University since she took over from…”
Photo: Mark Raynes Roberts
Editorial and mentoring services for emerging writers.
Carolyn Smart is the author of six volumes of poetry and an award-winning memoir. Two of her poetry collections have been internationally staged as full-length performances. She is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, poetry editor for the MacLennan Series of McGill-Queen’s University Press, and for 32 years she was Director of Creative Writing at Queen’s University, mentoring generations of emerging authors.
“I never believed I could make a life as a writer until I met Carolyn Smart. In addition to being an exceptional teacher and creator across multiple genres, in addition to being the founder of Canada’s most important award for early-career writers, in addition to being my first publisher, having gone well above and beyond her job requirements as a creative writing instructor to publish an anthology of student work that has since become a ten-volume institution – she is, quite simply, a master reader. Her ability to get to the heart of the work – to assess with precision, honesty and generosity what the writer is trying to convey, and how to best do it – is more refined than almost anyone I’ve ever worked with.”
Omar El Akkad, author of “American War” (M&S, 2017); “What Strange Paradise” (M&S 2021). Photo: Kenneth de Kok
Recent Publications
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Careen, Brick Books, 2015
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are the stuff of legend – why tell their story again? Chances are you don’t know the nuances – their love story and that of their accomplices Buck Barrow and his wife Blanche; their aspirations, conflicts and prayerful natures; and ultimately the sources of their tragedy. At its core, Careen is a long poem spoken by the characters, though the voices are companioned by newspaper articles often ironically at odds with the inside story. Smart lets the principal actors relate their own tale—a book of voices speaking out of the desperate Dirty Thirties.
“[Smart] understands loneliness in all its forms, and writes with a clarity and compassion that is powerfully affecting.” —Anne Michaels
“Carolyn is a brilliant reader. She has an ideal combination: a generosity with her own sizeable knowledge and a humble approach towards the new writing before her. These qualities enable her to identify precisely what a work needs.”
Moez Surani, author of “are the rivers in your poems real” (Book*hug 2019)
Photo: Nadarajah Vickneswaran