Born and raised outside Montreal, I am a settler scholar of French Canadian ancestry with expertise in Canadian literature, children’s literature and culture, digital humanities, gender and sexuality studies, the history of the book, periodical studies, scholarly editing, screen studies and adaptation, and young adult literature. Since receiving my PhD in English from McMaster University, I have held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta, a Leverhulme visiting fellowship at the University of Worcester, and visiting appointments at several more universities and research centres across Canada. I also earned a graduate certificate in publishing from Toronto Metropolitan University and have taught courses in literary and media studies at all undergraduate levels as well as a graduate certificate course in publishing. Since 2022, I work as a copy editor at the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Extended Learning, where I provide editorial and copyright support in the development of online learning materials.
The work of L.M. Montgomery (1874–1942) and its derivatives have been at the centre of my research program for over two decades. Not only does my work encompass the vast set of primary texts whose popularity and influence persist more than a century after the publication of Anne of Green Gables, but also it traces the extent of her cultural footprint in terms of adaptations and tourist sites, copyright and trademark legislation, online communities, print culture, the archive, and the reception of Canadian texts in markets around the world. My books include an award-winning three-volume critical anthology, The L.M. Montgomery Reader (University of Toronto Press, 2013–15), which reprints and discusses rare essays by Montgomery, interviews with her, commentary and scholarship on her work, coverage of her death and funeral, and reviews of her books, both within her lifetime and beyond; an edition of Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted (Penguin Canada, 2009), which has been translated into five languages to date and was reissued as a Penguin Modern Classics Edition in 2018; and a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Anne of Green Gables (2017), which I prepared and introduced. I am also editor of The L.M. Montgomery Library (University of Toronto Press), which collects Montgomery’s extensive periodical work, beginning with A Name for Herself: Selected Writings, 1891–1917 (2018), A World of Songs: Selected Poems, 1894–1921 (2019), and Twice upon a Time: Selected Stories, 1898–1939 (2022), and, since 2007, I have directed the web resource L.M. Montgomery Online.
In addition to my academic work, my first novel, entitled In the Key of Dale and telling the story of a queer sixteen-year-old music prodigy who starts writing letters to his late father, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in fall 2022, with an audiobook from Orange Sky Audio and an Italian translation forthcoming in 2023. My short stories have appeared in The Antigonish Review, The New Quarterly, and Plenitude Magazine.
I am currently busy with new fiction manuscripts and with new academic projects on adolescent fiction, long-form serial television, Canadian fiction about child characters but targeting adult readers, and cross-media adaptations, in addition to editing the Early Canadian Literature series (Wilfrid Laurier University Press), which returns to print rare texts deserving of reconsideration in the canon of Canadian literature.
More information about my work can be found on my personal website. My pronouns are he/him/his, and my surname is pronounced Luh-FAVE. Photo by Kassandra Fritz.
