Marlene Cookshaw
Marlene Cookshaw's new book of poetry is called Double Somersaults and will be published by the end of November 1999. Marlene was born and raised in south Alberta, where she attended Winston Churchill High School and the University of Lethbridge. She moved to the west coast of BC in 1979, and received a B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria in 1984. She lives in an old farmhouse on Pender Island with fiction writer Michael Kenyon and a Hungarian Vizsla named Ge'za; she keeps a large garden and a dozen ducks. She has been a member of The Malahat Review's editorial board since 1985, and is currently Acting Editor. She has served on juries for various writing awards, including the BC Book Prize for Poetry, BC Festival of the Arts literary scholarships, Malahat's Long Poem Prize, the Prince Edward Island Literary Competition, and the BC provincial scholarships. Cookshaw's other works are: Personal Luggage (Coach House Press, 1984), The Whole Elephant (Brick Books, 1989), Coupling (chapbook ÷ Outlaw Editions, 1994;1998) and Bottomland (chapbook ÷ Reference West, 1995). Her work has appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, and has been featured on CBC Radio. The Whole Elephant was a runner-up for the BC Book Prize. "Jan Garbarek's Saxophone" won 1st prize in the League of Canadian Poets competition (1997); "Open and Close" won 1st prize in Arc's Poem of the Year competition (1997).
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