Poet and artist Melanie Janisse-Barlow will deliver a free public reading and talk Wednesday, Jan. 24, to open her term as Winter 2024 writer-in-residence in the Department of English and Creative Writing.

The event will begin at 4 p.m. in the Leddy Library Collaboratory. Janisse-Barlow will also offer one-on-one editing consultations with aspiring or established writers during her residency, Jan. 22 to Feb. 16.

English professor Susan Holbrook notes that Janisse-Barlow’s accomplishments in two disciplines will make for an especially compelling reading.

Born in Windsor, Janisse-Barlow is the author of two poetry collections. Her first collection, Orioles in the Oranges, was nominated for the ReLit Award in 2009, and her second, Thicket, released in September 2019, has been toured throughout North America and Europe.

Her paintings appear in private and public collections around the world. She is represented in Canada by Youn Contemporary and is a member of the League of Canadian Poets and the Writer's Union of Canada. To learn more, visit her website.

Dr. Holbrook says the writer-in-residence program provides all students and community members the chance for a private editing consult about their creative work with a writer of national stature.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to get meaningful feedback and perhaps fire up a new creative spark,” she says.

Past writers-in-residence have included novelists, poets, playwrights, graphic novelists, and genre-fiction writers from across Canada who worked to nurture generations of Windsor writers while completing manuscripts and projects that, like those of writers Terry Griggs and Rosemary Nixon, were launched in the city. University Players has produced plays by previous writers-in-residence: Brebeuf’s Ghost by Daniel David Moses, and several by David French.