Maritimer convert named city’s poet laureate
Fawn Parker will earn annual $5,000 honorarium for two-year as Fredericton’s literary figure
The City of Fredericton has named the fourth writer to occupy the position of its poet laureate, and she’s an Ontario transplant who’s embraced life in New Brunswick.
City hall issued a news release this week announcing Fawn Parker, 30, as the capital’s new poet laureate.
The novelist moved to Fredericton from Toronto four years ago.
As a child, the release said, the writer’s mother used to take her on trips to the Maritimes, where they’d visit coffee shops and peruse the shelves in local bookstores.
“I felt so drawn to the East,” Parker said. “I live in a house with my partner and we plan to stay forever.”
She was bitten by the storytelling bug as a kid by telling stories to her older sister through a home intercom system, the release said.
“I enjoyed telling stories and keeping people interested by making worlds for them,” Parker said.
The author has published five books and is pursuing a doctorate degree in creative writing at the University of New Brunswick.
The city created the position of the poet laureate to serve as an advocate for the written and spoken word in the municipality.
The two-year position, which pays an annual honorarium of $5,000, requires the chosen writer to create new, original works and to present them to the public. Parker succeeds local writer Jordan Tretheway in the role.
Parker said in the release that one of her goals in advocating for literature and culture as the poet laureate is to offer a voluntary writing workshop to patients in hospitals.
She said she also plans to collect books and chapbooks written by local authors to distribute to hospitals, schools and other community-oriented facilities to raise awareness of those writers to city residents.
Among the honours and awards Parker has earned in her writing career, the release said, are 2023 J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award and the 2023 Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize for her book of poetry, Soft Inheritance; and a Scotiabank Giller Prize nomination for her 2022 novel, What We Both Know.
She’s also keen on teaching writing and collaborating with other writers, the release said, noting she hosts a monthly reading series at Westminster Books called the Catch-Up at which writers can share published works or workshop projects still in development.
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