About

Joanna Lilley's fifth book and third poetry collection, Endlings, was published by Turnstone Press in 2020 and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. Joanna is also the author of a novel, Worry Stones (Ronsdale Press), which was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, and a short story collection, The Birthday Books (Hagios Press). Joanna's other poetry collections are If There Were Roads (Turnstone Press), and The Fleece Era (Brick Books) which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. In 2021, Joanna won the Borealis Prize, the Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution. As well as a postgraduate certificate in creative writing from the Humber School for Writers, she has an MLitt degree in creative writing from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde and diplomas in journalism and plain language editing. Born in the south of England, Joanna lived in Wales and Scotland before moving to Canada and has given readings and workshops as far afield as Alaska and Iceland. She now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she's a founding board member of Yukon Words and is very grateful to reside on the Traditional Territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council. 

Read poems by Joanna

• Denial, highly commended, Gingko Prize
• Beauty, Turnstone Poetry
• (sea) (lake) (river), The Scales Project
• Tomography and other poems, Geographies, Ice Floe Press
• Tinto, Poetry Map of Scotland, a StAnza Poetry Festival project
• Waterlogged, The Walrus

Listen to Joanna read her work

• My Mother Made Sure, Aryamati Poetry Prize runner-up, UK
• Nothing Can Be Done, Turnstone Poetry
• Out of Kilter, Bimblebox Art Project, Australia
• I Hold Up My Hands, 49th Shelf Launchpad
• Specimen, Bakings literary journal, Scotland
• Worry Stones, Ronsdale Press YouTube channel 

What Joanna is working on

Joanna is currently working on a novel with the support of a Canada Council for the Arts grant and an Access Copyright Foundation grant. She's deeply grateful for this support. 

Joanna is also working on a poetry manuscript and a family project with her niece Leonora Lilley.