Creative and Professional Writing Faculty | English Language and Literature

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Here are some of the faculty members who teach courses for the Creative and Professional Writing degree. Click on the faculty member's name to view his or her full profile. English Language and Literature degrees at the University of Waterloo integrate the study of literature, rhetoric, professional communication, and media studies, so all faculty in the department participate to some degree in the Creative and Professional Writing program.

For information on all of our faculty members, see our Faculty profiles page.

For a list of our faculty members' research interests, see our Areas of Expertise page.

Lamees Al Ethari has published poetry, including the collection From the Wounded Banks of the Tigris, and a memoir, Waiting for the Rain. She is also the co-facilitator of The X Page: A Storytelling Workshop, which connects women who are immigrants or refugees with artists who assist and mentor them in writing and performing their own stories. Her research interests include life writing, Arab and Arab North American literature and culture, diaspora and postcolonial theory, and ethnic American literature.

Bruce Dadey worked as a technical communicator for seven years for international IT companies such as Amdahl, Fujitsu, and Antares, and was the managing editor of a community-based brand journalism project with a team of over three hundred writers. He teaches courses in business and technical communication and writing for the media. His research interests include rhetorical theory and visual rhetoric.

Jennifer Harris is the author of a number of children's books, including When You Were New and The Keeper of Stars, a Junior Library Guild Gold Star selection, and a TD Summer Reading Club selection. She has also published the chapbook Poems for Reluctant Housewives. Her research interests include nineteenth-century American literature, Black American and Canadian literature, and children’s literature.

Andrea Jonahs has published creative nonfiction pieces in a variety of venues and, in addition to her doctorate in English, has an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She also teaches science and engineering communication. Her research areas include critical discourse analysis, critical race theory, and race and new media.

Vinh Nguyen is author of the memoir The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse (2025). His creative writing has appeared in Brick, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, and Grain. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of Asian diasporic literatures and cultures, critical refugee studies, auto/biography, film, critical race theory, global Anglophone literature, and creative writing.

Carrie Snyder has published two novels, including The Girl Runner, which was nominated for the Rogers trust, and two collections of short fiction, including The Juliet Stories, which was nominated for the Governor General's Award. She is a co-facilitator of The X Page: A Storytelling Workshop, and teaches undergraduate creative writing courses that have included literary fiction, speculative fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and graphic fiction / memoir.

Sarah Tolmie has published a number of collections of poetry, including The Art of Dying, which was nominated for the Griffin Prize, and Trio, which was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award. She has also published a number of works of speculative fiction, including The Little Animals, which earned a special citation at the 2020 Philip K Dick Awards, and The Stone Boatmen, which was nominated for the Crawford Award. Her research interests include medieval and early modern literature, general British literature, historiography, and visionary poetry and embodiment.