Shannon McConnell is a writer, educator and musician originally from Vancouver, BC. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in untethered, The Fieldstone Review, Louden Singletree, In Medias Res, Rat’s Ass Review, The Anti-Languorous Project, and more. She holds degrees in English Literature and Education from the University of the Fraser Valley and Simon Fraser University, respectively, and is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan’s MFA in Writing program. In 2018, she won second place for the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award for Poetry. She is completing an MA in History at the University of Saskatchewan. Shannon currently lives in Saskatoon, SK, and will be moving to Kingston, ON, in September 2020.

"“‘Did you think you could hold their silence / like kittens under water?’ No, according to Shannon McConnell. With the unwavering eyes of an activist, McConnell restores voice, vision, muscle and bone to the men, women, and children who were betrayed by Woodlands, an institution that failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens. This is a vital collection, written with intelligence and delivered with grace.” —Katherine Lawrence, award-winning poet and young adult author

“In the late 1990s I began the public art project ASYLUM: A Long Last Look At Woodlands. While photographing what remained of the institution’s rooms and hallways I became immersed in the history of the Woodlands School. I couldn’t help but sense the pain and suffering of those who had lived there. Shannon McConnell with great depth and compassion tells the stories of the people who lived in these rooms. When I read her words I felt that I had heard these voices before.” —Michael de Courcy, artist, ASYLUM: A Long Last Look At Woodlands

“Here are the lost lives, thwarted dreams and desires of the neglected, abused and forgotten inmates of the infamous Woodlands School. Shannon McConnell’s poems are a tender reimagination of the girls and boys, men and women who were disappeared by a society that didn’t want to see or acknowledge their capacity for love, humour, kindness, insight and wonder. In these poems, their humanity is rendered in lucid, painstaking detail.” —Elizabeth Philips, poet and novelist

“McConnell fights to ensure that the inhabitants of the Woodlands School, ‘every name / buried here,’ are not forgotten. She holds up the remnants of the troubling and erased history of this place before the reader and demands that they pay attention in this mighty debut.” —Nicole Haldoupis, editor of Grain and untethered and author of Tiny Ruins"