Jaclyn Desforges

Jaclyn Desforges is the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther Books), winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC's picks for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. She's also the author of Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020), a picture book which was shortlisted for a Chocolate Lily Award and selected for the 2023 TD Summer Reading Club. In 2023, Jaclyn served as the youngest-ever Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer In Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library. Her writing has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, the Best of the Net Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize. Jaclyn was a finalist for the 2024 CRAFT Novelette Print Prize, the 2024 Room Magazine Fiction contest, the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2023 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. She’s the winner of the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award and two Short Works Prizes. Jaclyn’s writing has been featured in literary magazines across North America. She is an alumna of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing. Jaclyn teaches creative writing at Wilfrid Laurier University and lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter.