Aislinn Hunter


Aislinn Hunter is a Canadian poetry and fiction author.
She studied art history and writing at the University of Victoria where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Her Master of Fine Arts degree came from the University of British Columbia, her MSc in Writing and Cultural Politics came from the University of Edinburgh as did her PhD where she wrote on writers' houses/museums and resonant things with a focus on the Victorian era and thing theory via Heidegger. She currently teaches Creative Writing part-time at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Hunter's research interests include material culture, museums, books-as-things, Victorian writers and ephemera.
Her 2002 novel Stay was adapted for film by Wiebke Von Carolsfeld and released as a Telefilm / Irish Film Board co-production in 2013, premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival. It stars Aidan Quinn and Taylor Schilling.
Her novel, The World Before Us, set in a UK museum, was published by Doubleday, Canada in 2014 and by Hamish Hamilton in the UK, Hogarth Press in the US, and Marchand de Feuilles in Quebec. It won the 2015 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, an NPR 'Best Book' and a Chatelaine Book Club pick.
In the spring of 2017 her third book of poetry, Linger, Still, was published by Gaspereau Press. It won the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry and was long-listed for the Pat Lowther Poetry Prize.
Dr Hunter was selected to be a Canadian War Artist and in 2018 she worked with the Canadian Armed Forces and with NATO Forces at CFB Suffield.
Her new novel 'The Certainties' is due out in 2020 with Knopf Canada.
She was married for 25 years but lost her husband to brain cancer in 2018. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Awards and recognition