Linda Morra

Linda earned her B.A. from the University of Toronto, and her M.A. and Ph.D. (in Canadian literature, with a specialization in Canadian Studies) from the University of Ottawa. Linda also won a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (UBC), during which time she produced her first book, Corresponding Influence: Selected Letters of Emily Carr and Ira Dilworth (2006; http://www.utppublishing.com/Corresponding-Influence-Selected-Letters-of-Emily-Carr-and-Ira-Dilworth.html).

She is an Associate Professor at Bishop's University where she teaches in fields that encompass Canadian literature, Canadian and Cultural Studies, Visual Art Culture, Indigenous literature, and women's writing and archives.

With Deanna Reder, she co-edited the interdisciplinary collection, Troubling Tricksters (WLUP 2010), which was nominated for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in English. See http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/General/reder-morra-announcement.pdf.

She is also collaborating with Dr. Jessica Schagerl on editing Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace: Explorations in Canadian Women's Archives (WLUP, forthcoming June 2012), a collection of essays that assesses the negotiations—and sometimes contradictions—involved in responsibly dealing with the tangible records of women's public and private lives, and the fact that these preserved archival documents were often seen as part of a systematic nation-building process (http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/PDFCatalogues/wlupress-spring-summer2012.pdf).

She was awarded a SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2005-2009) and the FQRSC Etablissement de nouveaux professeurs-chercheurs (2009-2013) for a monograph she is completing in which she explores Canadian women writers’ self-agency and textual integrity in relation to the publishing industry in Canada.

During her research for the monograph, she discovered Jane Rule's hand-written autobiography, Taking My Life, in the University of British Columbia archives, which Rule had given her permission to peruse. She subsequently transcribed, edited, and prepared the autobiography for publication (Talon 2011) and also wrote the afterword (http://talonbooks.com/books/taking-my-life).

Taking My Life has thus far been short-listed for the LAMDA Award, received a nomination for the Stonewall Book Award, and garnered many positive reviews. One such review appeared in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/taking-my-life-by-jane-rule/article2135237/.

Linda currently lives in Montreal.