Margôt Maddison-MacFadyen

British Columbia-born Margôt Maddison-MacFadyen has made Prince Edward Island her home. Her poems, short stories, and essays appear nationally and internationally in both cultural and scholarly journals, and her work is anthologized. She co-edited A Gathering of TWiGS, winner of the 2014 PEI Book Award for Poetry, and she’s won prizes in the Cox & Palmer Island Literary Awards. More recently, she won the 2017 Alfred G. Bailey Prize for her poetry manuscript From Hollyburn Mountain: A Memoir of My Family, Places, and Ghosts, and the 2017 Harry Buller Prize for her independently-published novella Mary: A Story of Young Mary Prince.

In 2015, Maddison-MacFadyen, and her sister Brenda Hewer, a designer, established Sisters Publishing, a platform for their independently-published books. They maintain a website at sisterspublishing.com. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre selected their first title, When the Circus Comes to Town and Other Stories, and the more recent Mary: A Story of Young Mary Prince, for inclusion in Best Books for Kids and Teens, Spring 2016 and Fall 2017 respectively. Both books are authored by Maddison-MacFadyen.

Formerly a high school English and Math teacher, Maddison-MacFadyen recently graduated with an Interdisciplinary PhD from the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Currently, she is a Canada Research Chair Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nipissing University.

Websites:

https://www.sisterspublishing.com
https://maryprince.org

Awards:

2017 Arthur G. Bailey Prize
Poetry manuscript
From Hollyburn Mountain: A Memoir of My Family, Places, and Ghosts

2017 Harry Buller Prize
Novella for Junior-aged readers
Mary: A story of Young Mary Prince

2017 Andrew Hill Clark Award, second place
Academic essay, historical geography
Bermuda’s Cavendish Hall, Enslavement, and Historic Timber

2014 Prince Edward Island Book Award for Poetry, co-editor and author
Poetry anthology
A Gathering of TWiGS

2013 Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem, finalist
Poem
Emergent Seed

2013-2015 Four Island Literary Awards
Poetry and short fiction

Selected Publications:

2017 Mary: A Story of Young Mary Prince
Novella for Junior-aged readers
Sisters Publishing

2016 “Bear’s Wife”
Poem
Story Quilt

2015 “Christmas Eve Debutante”
Short story
In Snow Softly Falling
Acorn Press

2015 When the Circus Comes to Town and Other Stories
Short stories for Junior-aged readers
Sisters Publishing

2014 “Those Even Older Were Witches”
Poem
Newfoundland Quarterly

2014 “Mary Prince: black rebel, abolitionist, storyteller”
Academic essay/book chapter
In Critical Insights: The Slave Narrative
Salem Press

2013 “Ruby Red Tomatoes,” The Green Man,” “Gretchen’s Hair,” and “Real Red Cowboy Boots”
Poems
In A Gathering of TWiGS
The TWiG Collective

2013 “Mary Prince, Grand Turk, and Antigua”
Academic essay
Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies

2013 “Going Up the Country”
Poem
In Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s
She Writes Press

2013 “This white woman has journeyed far: serendipity, counter-stories, hauntings, and ekphrasis as a type of poetic inquiry”
Academic essay
The Morning Watch Journal of Educational and Social Analysis

2013 “The beautiful golden-brown women of a Gauguin painting”
Poem
Still Point Arts Quarterly

2012 “Turks Islands’ salt, enslavement, and the Newfoundland-West Indies trade”
Feature article
Newfoundland Quarterly

2011 “Looking for Annie Saint in Bonavista”
Feature article
Newfoundland Quarterly