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When Mareike Johnson immigrated to Canada, she dreamed of teaching Indigenous literatures–but as life happens, sometimes the best laid-out plans don’t turn out as you’d expect. She left academia and reinvented herself.

Mareike now uses her teaching and academic background and her lived mental health experience to facilitate Writing for Mental Health (WFMH) workshops, a model of writing workshops developed by her friend and mentor Ted Dyck based on the research of social psychologist James W. Pennebaker (see, for example, his book Expressive Writing co-authored with John F. Evans, 2014). WFMH workshops can be customized to group/community needs.

Mareike has considerable experience working with vulnerable populations, having facilitated three workshop series at Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge near Maple Creek, SK. She co-edited three Writing for Mental Health chapbooks (2020, 2021, 2023).

Mareike uses writing to explore her various selves. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in TRANSITION, spring Magazine, and Feel the Words Burning on your Tongue. Her book, The Decolonizing Poetics of Indigenous Literatures (2015), received the 2016 Saskatchewan Book Award for Scholarly Writing. As of May 2023, she serves as editor of TRANSITION, a literary magazine with a mental health focus published twice annually by the Saskatchewan Division of the Canadian Mental Health Association (see Transition Magazine - CMHA Saskatchewan Division).