Melanie Little, 2005 - 2006 Markin-Flanagan Canadian Writer-in-Residence

Melanie Little, photo: Peter NormanMelanie Little's debut book, the story collection Confidence, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and named one of the Globe and Mail's Top 100 books of 2003. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops, Outskirts: Women Writing from Small Places, Certain Things About My Mother, and Nerves Out Loud, as well as in magazines including The Malahat Review, sub-TERRAIN, Prairie Fire, Event, The Fiddlehead, and Books in Canada. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, Georgia Straight, Vancouver Sun, and National Post. She is a past winner of the Writers' Union of Canada Short Prose Competition and the Periodical Writers' Association of Canada Journalism Award. Little holds a Masters of Arts in English Literature from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, where she served as an editor of PRISM International.

She has lived in Timmins, Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Ottawa. A former figure skater, Little has worked as a tour guide, teacher, museum guard, bartender, dance instructor, stage manager, concierge, and tulip promoter. She has taught writing, literature, and English as a Second Language in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa.