Aislinn Hunter

Aislinn Hunter is an award-winning poet, novelist and teacher. She is the author of eight books: What’s Left Us (stories and a novella), Into the Early Hours (poetry), Stay (a novel), The Possible Past (poetry), A Peepshow with Views of the Interior (paratextual essays), The World Before Us (a novel), Linger, Still (poetry) and The Certainties (a novel).

Her books have won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Gerald Lampert Award for Poetry, and the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry as well as being shortlisted for numerous provincial and national awards. Her novel Stay (2002, re-released by Anchor in 2013) was turned into a feature film set in Ireland and Montréal that starred Taylor Schilling and Aidan Quinn. The World Before Us (2014) was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, an NPR Best Book of the Year and was called "a work of great power" by the Guardian (U.K.) and "hypnotically beautiful" by the Chicago Tribune. The Certainties (Knopf, 2020) was a bestseller.

Aislinn holds a BFA in writing and in history in art (University of Victoria), an MFA in creative writing (UBC), an MSc in writing and cultural politics (The University of Edinburgh), and a PhD in English literature (Edinburgh) for which she wrote on material culture ("thing theory") and resonance. She has worked for the National Film Board and CBC Radio, and as a sessional instructor in the writing department at the University of Victoria. She is currently a faculty member in Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and primarily teaches graduate classes at The Writer’s Studio.