In her third poetry book for Frontenac House, Ali Riley applies her unique and inventive poetics to our National identity. Breaking down and remixing our familiar icons – for example, The Hudson‘s Bay Company, Susannah Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush – the poet finds that wanderlust, geography, solitude and a thirst for exploration still underlie the Canadian Spirit.

Ali Riley's profile page

Ali Riley’s poems have appeared in Geist, The nth Position Anthology, Matrix, This Magazine, Event and the Moosehead Review. Her collection Tear Down was short-listed for the Re-Lit awards, and her first book, Wayward, was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her novel-in-progress, Hag, was written on a reality show and took first prize in the Walrus magazine/SLS Fiction Contest. She was born in Calgary, and was the singer/songwriter of the seminal psycho-country band Sacred Heart of Elvis. In Toronto, she acted in several theatre productions, including The Lorca Play, for which the company won a Dora Mavor Moore award for best performance by a female. Her produced plays include dog dream, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Hole in my Heart the Size of My Heart. Her poetry has appeared in Geist, The nth Position Anthology, Matrix, This Magazine, Event and the Moosehead Review, and she has performed at festivals, schools, and hootennannies across the country. She currently lives on a farm between Nanton and Vulcan, Alberta.