BFA, MFA, PhD
Instructor, English
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
School of Humanities
English
604.986.1911 ext. 3677
Fir Building, room FR 464
leahbailly@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, Creative Writing & Literature, University of Southern California, 2019.
MFA, Creative Writing, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2010.
BFA, Writing, University of Victoria, 2004.
Bio
Leah Bailly (PhD, University of Southern California, 2019) is a writer, scholar and facilitator who currently teaches writing and literature at Capilano University. She has won honours from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Alberta Literary Awards, Summer Literary Seminars, Graywolf Press, The Banff Centre, Breadloaf and Yaddo.
Bailly holds creative writing degrees from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she was Deputy Editor of the literary journal Witness and the University of Victoria, where she was a fiction editor at The Malahat Review.
Most recently, Bailly completed a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature at the University of Southern California, where she was the Wallis Annenberg Fellow in fiction. At USC, Bailly served as Editor in Chief of Gold Line Press, and fiction editor at Ricochet Editions.
After living abroad for ten years, including time in the United States, Scotland, France, Asia, Africa and Central America, Leah has returned to enjoy Vancouver with her family.
In my experience, my best tool as a professor is to listen to students and to become attuned to the cultural flashpoints that resonate through their lives and scholarly interests. As an academic, I teach toward critical analysis followed by a measured, thoughtful response.
As a writer and teacher of the arts, I work hard to foster creativity, collaboration and empathy in students work. I strive for a learning environment based on trust, where students feel free to develop new ideas and where they focus these ideas in an organized, coherent way.
My area of research focuses on the ways that literature intersects with technology and communications.
My scholarly work focuses on utopia and digital-age literature, in particular, the effects the Network Society has on forms of speculative fiction.
My creative work takes the form of long and short-form narrative as well as creative nonfiction and essay.
Explore & Create Grant, Canada Council for the Arts, 2023.
MacDowell Fellowship, 2022.
Winner, CRAFT First Pages Contest, 2022.
La Leña Artist Residency, 2022.
Grant, CARS (Creative Activity, Research & Scholarship), 2021.
Teaching Excellence Award, Capilano University, 2020.
Virginia C Piper Center for Creative Writing, Teaching Fellowship, 2019.
Final Year Fellowship, USC Graduate School, 2018.
Annenberg Fellowship, University of Southern California, 2012-2017.
James Lougheed Award for Excellence, Province of Alberta, 2016.
Edward E Moses Award for Creative Writing, 2015.
Graywolf Prize for Best Novel Excerpt, 2013.
Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Individual Artist Development Grant, 2012.
Arts Graduate Award, Province of Alberta, 2010.
Amber Bowerman Travel Writing Award, Alberta Literary Awards, 2009.
Professor of the Year, UNLV Greek Society, 2008.