Kathy Mac

1961-

Kathleen McConnell, who publishes poetry, plays, and what she terms lyric articles under the pen name Kathy Mac, was born on 17 July 1961 in Peterborough, Ontario. Mac moved from Ontario to Halifax to study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), earning her BFA in Art History in 1986. Work followed as editor, graphic designer, and poetry instructor. Mac returned to university for formal study in English literature, receiving her BA from Mount Saint Vincent University in 1993, followed by an MA from Wilfrid Laurier (1994) and a PhD from Dalhousie University (2001).  Mac has published two books of poetry. Her first book, Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth (2002) won the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada and was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry that year. A long poem from that book, “Tooke, Suitor to the Spectacular Givens,” received Dalhousie University’s Joseph Howe Poetry Award. Other publications include a chapbook, Reunion: Drawings (2004), co-produced with artist Elizabeth MacKenzie, The Hundefräulein Papers (2009), Porn, Pain, and Complicity: Women Heroes from Pygmalion to Twilight (2013).  Her work appears in several anthologies, including the Milton Acorn Memorial Anthology, the League of Canadian Poets’ More Garden Varieties, II, and Poets ’88. Since the late 1980s her individual poems have also been published in literary journals in Canada and abroad. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, doing editorial work on the Living Archives series produced by the Feminist Caucus; she belongs to the Writers’ Federations of both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; she is active in the WolfTree Writers, a Fredericton-based women’s writing group; and she is a founding member of the Stand and Deliver performance group, originating at St. Thomas University in 2009. Mac was a finalist for The Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry (2010, 2011) and has also received New Brunswick’s Alfred G. Bailey Prize (2012). Mac has lived since 2002 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she teaches in the English Department at St. Thomas University.

Predominant New Brunswick Residences:

Fredericton