Liz Howard's first book of poems, Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent, won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize, the first time a debut collection has won the award. The book was also a finalist for the 2015 Governor General's Award for Poetry. Born and raised in northern Ontario, Howard received an Honours Bachelor of Science with High Distinction from the University of Toronto. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian literary journals such as The Capilano Review, The Puritan, and Matrix Magazine. Her chapbook Skullambient was a finalist for the 2012 bpNichol Chapbook Award. She recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing through the University of Guelph and works as a research officer in cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto.
Globe and Mail 100 2015 In these gorgeously heretical poems, Liz Howard sculpts a vocabulary that is co-extensive with the tenacious landscape of the North and the deeply resistant jurisdiction of a female natural history. Shot through too with urban furor, forest, dioxin, tern, and sulphur are syllabic elements in a passionate argument for pleasure, where pleasure is one name for a principled refusal of the colonizing machinations of the current regime. Not afraid to draw limits that are both sonic and ethical, robust and delicate, Howard listens closely to the bodies of this thinking earth. Lisa Robertson, author of Cinema of the Present