The Power of Our Personal Stories
Virtual Writer-in-Residence Talk: Dr. Jenna Butler
In times of change, sharing our personal stories through essays, poetry, and memoir allows us to build bridges. A personal story, well told and thoughtfully shared, helps us to find common ground and build links where we might once have perceived only differences dividing us from each other.
Dr. Jenna Butler (she/her) is an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the Arctic travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Her newest book, Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate change, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards in 2021. Butler is a retired professor of creative and environmental writing and an off-grid organic farmer in northern Treaty 6.
