First, I need to clarify that my last name is Sanford Blades. Please don’t call me Blades or shelve my book under “B”.

I am grateful to live and write on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking people–-now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations (Victoria, BC). I was born in Treaty 6 territory, the land of the Michif Piyii (Métis) and the Nêhiyaw-Askiy (Plains Cree) (Edmonton, AB). Though I am drawn to the ocean and dream of living in a cabin in the woods on Galiano Island, Edmonton holds a giant place in my heart and will always be home.

I began taking my writing seriously upon my first publication, a short story titled “Lost and Found,” in Island Writer, the literary journal of the Victoria Writers’ Society, in 2009. Since then, I’ve had stories published in literary magazines across Canada, as well as in the United States and in Ireland. In 2016, I earned my MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, with Lorna Jackson as my supervisor. My debut novel, Fake It So Real, was published in October, 2020 by Nightwood Editions.

When I’m not writing, I spend my time working as an editorial assistant for an academic psychology journal, Theory & Psychology; teaching academic writing at Royal Roads University; selling books at Munro’s Books; and raising my three beautiful boys.

I am currently at work on my second novel. Tentatively titled Girl on Paper, it’s about adoption, riot grrrl, zines, mothers, daughters, and being an eighteen-year-old girl. The whole thing swarms around questions of motherhood—what makes someone a mother: blood, care, responsibility—the burden mothers carry, and the shifting mother-daughter relationship. Oh, and it’s set in Edmonton in the mid-90s. You can have a taste of it (Chapter 6: Copycat) in The Masters Review’s New Voices section here.

Official bio: Susan Sanford Blades lives on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations (Victoria, Canada). Her debut novel, Fake It So Real, won the 2021 ReLit Award in the novel category and was a finalist for the 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Reader: The Best of Canada’s New Writers and has been published in literary magazines across Canada as well as in the United States and Ireland. Her fiction has most recently been published in Gulf Coast, The Malahat Review and The Masters Review.