An original and highly subversive critique of the academy by women affiliated with universities and colleges across Canada, The Madwoman in the Academy:Women Boldly Take on the Ivory Tower explores topics familiar to women working in academia around the world: the clash between family and work, the politics of academe, and the rifts between an academic career and political activism. Contributors offer writings in a wide range of genres, including personal essays, poetry, short stories, dialogues, and other innovative formats, daring to confront their experiences with energy, anger, wit, and humour.

Ranging from the playful to the painful, The Madwoman in the Academy brings you names well known to literary communities alongside new but feisty voices that will forever change readers' ideas about the relationship between women and the academy.

Educator, activist, editor, and writer, Deborah Schnitzer is the author of the novel, Gertrude Unmanageable, the long poem, Loving Gertrude Stein, as well as scholarly works and critical anthologies equally devoted to the unexpected. Her latest book, An Unexpected Break in the Weather, won the 2010 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. Schnitzer is a 3M Teaching Fellow in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg.

Deborah Schnitzer's profile page

Deborah Keahey was awarded the 1999 John Hirsch Award for most promising Manitoba writer and the 1994-95 Heaven Chapbook Award for the d word. She also wrote Making it Home: Place in Canadian Prairie Literature. Keahey has spent time in Calgary, Italy, Texas, Tennessee, Michigan, and Manitoba. She currently lives in British Columbia.

Deborah Keahey's profile page

• Winner, Alberta Book Awards, Best Scholarly Book (Book Publishers Association of Alberta)