Lori Garrison
Lori Garrison is a 27 year old-writer who grew up in Prince Edward County, a small section of rural Ontario now famous for its wine and cottage country, although at the time it was famous for Susanna Moodie and an exceedingly high rate of teen pregnancy. She attended Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario, where she lived on a street frequented by the police and obtained a diploma in journalism. She worked briefly as an intern for the Ottawa Citizen and as columnist and freelancer for Capital Xtra! before returning to school at Ottawa University, where she graduated cum laude with an Honours Degree in English.
Upon graduation, she happily looked for work in her field, only to realize that the recession had made “her field” anything that Boomers wouldn't do. She found work as a bartender and server in a variety of establishments, which allowed her the freedom of backpacking at Algonquin Provincial Park whenever possible and carefully eyeing her bank account to ascertain whether the rent money would be there. Her first published poem appeared in the small Ottawa magazineBywords and her first published story appeared in the anthology Post-scripts to Darkness. Shortly there after she left Ontario, seeking her fortunes west, where she worked as a ranch hand on a large organic farm in Coronation, Alberta. During this time she learned that she a prairie night goes on forever and that pigs bite very hard. She returned to Ontario several months later, this time to Toronto, where she worked as a bartender in a three star restaurant and a server in a greasy spoon where she peeled 400 potatoes a day, writing all the while. Sick of smog, extremely small apartments for very large sums of money, bed bugs and being jammed onto the subway each morning like cattle in a slaughter car, Garrison packed her things in May of 2013 on a whim and the advice of friend and travelled nearly 6,000 km north west to Whitehorse, accompanied only by her best-friend, a pit bull named Herman Hesse, who is a lousy co-pilot by virtue of his inability to read or talk.
Since moving to Whitehorse, Garrison has rediscovered a love of fishing, eats all the grayling she can get, hikes whenever humanly possible and relishes in the slower pace of life. Her poetry and non-fiction has since been published in Qwerty,The Rusty Toque, and The Whitehorse Star. Her most recent project Today in the News, publishes one poem online every day, based on a news story of the day, for 365 days, which is teaching her both discipline and exactly how long a year is. Her favourite writers are Hemingway, Steinbeck, William Carlos Williams and Al Purdy, all of whom she desperately wishes were alive so she could invite them over for dinner and beers.
Upon graduation, she happily looked for work in her field, only to realize that the recession had made “her field” anything that Boomers wouldn't do. She found work as a bartender and server in a variety of establishments, which allowed her the freedom of backpacking at Algonquin Provincial Park whenever possible and carefully eyeing her bank account to ascertain whether the rent money would be there. Her first published poem appeared in the small Ottawa magazineBywords and her first published story appeared in the anthology Post-scripts to Darkness. Shortly there after she left Ontario, seeking her fortunes west, where she worked as a ranch hand on a large organic farm in Coronation, Alberta. During this time she learned that she a prairie night goes on forever and that pigs bite very hard. She returned to Ontario several months later, this time to Toronto, where she worked as a bartender in a three star restaurant and a server in a greasy spoon where she peeled 400 potatoes a day, writing all the while. Sick of smog, extremely small apartments for very large sums of money, bed bugs and being jammed onto the subway each morning like cattle in a slaughter car, Garrison packed her things in May of 2013 on a whim and the advice of friend and travelled nearly 6,000 km north west to Whitehorse, accompanied only by her best-friend, a pit bull named Herman Hesse, who is a lousy co-pilot by virtue of his inability to read or talk.
Since moving to Whitehorse, Garrison has rediscovered a love of fishing, eats all the grayling she can get, hikes whenever humanly possible and relishes in the slower pace of life. Her poetry and non-fiction has since been published in Qwerty,The Rusty Toque, and The Whitehorse Star. Her most recent project Today in the News, publishes one poem online every day, based on a news story of the day, for 365 days, which is teaching her both discipline and exactly how long a year is. Her favourite writers are Hemingway, Steinbeck, William Carlos Williams and Al Purdy, all of whom she desperately wishes were alive so she could invite them over for dinner and beers.
