Sonnet L'Abbé

L'Abbé has a PhD in English Literature from the University of British Columbia, a Master's degree in English literature from the University of Guelph and a BFA in film and video from York University.[1] She has been a script reader and has taught English at universities in South Korea, as well as teaching Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. From 2012 to 2014, she taught creative writing at UBC's Okanagan campus, and currently teaches at Vancouver Island University. In 2015, she was the Edna Staebler Writer In Residence at Wilfrid Laurier University.

As a critic, she was a regular reviewer of fiction and poetry for The Globe and Mail and has written scholarly articles on Canadian contemporary poetry. She has also worked as an assistant poetry editor at Canadian Literature, and is an occasional contributor to CBC Radio One[2] and the National Post.[3] L'Abbé was the guest editor of the Best Canadian Poetry 2014 anthology. She is currently on the editorial board of Brick Books.

Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals and several anthologies including Force Field: 77 BC Women Poets, Best Canadian Poetry 2009, Best Canadian Poetry 2010, Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets and Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets. She has been shortlisted for the 2010 CBC Literary Award for poetry [4] and has won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35.[5] In, 2013 she was the Artist-In-Motion for 2017StartsNow!, a series of talks launched by CBC Radio-Canada, Via Rail and Community Foundations of Canada that joined Canadians across the country in a conversation about how to celebrate the Canadian sesquicentennial.[6]

L'Abbé was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Jason L'Abbé, a Franco-Ontarian ceramic artist, and Janet L'Abbé, an artist of Guyanese Dougla descent (South Asian and African mixed descent). Her name, Sonnet, is a combination of parts of her parents' first names.

• A Strange Relief (McClelland and Stewart, 2001)
• Killarnoe (McClelland and Stewart, 2007)
• Best Canadian Poetry in English 2014 (guest editor, Tightrope Books, 2014)
• Anima Canadensis (chapbook, Junction Books, 2016)
• Sonnet's Shakespeare (2019)

• Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, 1999
• Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, 2000
• Shortlist, CBC Literary Award (Poetry), 2010
• bpNichol Chapbook Award, 2017[7]