Maureen Hynes

Hynes's debut collection of poetry, Rough Skin (Wolsak and Wynn), won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian in 1996. Her second collection, Harm's Way, was published by Brick Books in 2001, and her third, Marrow, Willow, was published in 2011 by Pedlar Press in Toronto. In 2015, Pedlar Press published Hynes's The Poison Colour. For The Poison Colour, she was a 2016 finalist for the League of Canadian Poets' Pat Lowther Award and Raymond Souster Award.

Maureen Hynes is a Canadian poet.[1]

Hynes is also a winner of the Petra Kenney Poetry Prize (London, England). Her poems have been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards.[1] Her fiction and poetry have appeared in over twenty anthologies, including Braid and Shreve's In Fine Form, 2nd Edition: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry. Hynes's poem, "Wing On," was selected by Helen Humphreys for Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016, and "The Last Cigarette" was chosen as one of 50 poems for Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010, edited by Lorna Crozier). Her poem "The Poison Colour" was longlisted for the same collection in 2011, edited by Priscila Uppal. Hynes's work has appeared in notable Canadian literary journals including The Malahat, The Fiddlehead, Arc, The Literary Review of Canada, Descant, Contemporary Verse 2, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review and Queen's Quarterly.

She has edited and co-edited several collections of poetry and is poetry editor for Our Times, Canada's national labour magazine.[1]

Hynes, a lesbian,[2] served on the first jury for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize in 1998, a literary award for emerging LGBT writers in Canada, selecting Zoe Whittall as that year's winner.[2]

She has also served on juries for the League of Canadian Poets' Pat Lowther Memorial Prize, the Bannister Poetry Award, Canadian University Press Student Journalism Awards and the Dan Sullivan Poetry Award. Hynes was a member of the Toronto Arts Council's Literary Committee from 2008 to 2011.

In addition to her poetry collections, Hynes published a memoir, Letters from China (Women's Press, 1981) about her experiences as a teacher trainer in China just after the end of the Cultural Revolution.

She taught ESL, trained ESL/EFL teachers, and published ESL textbooks, founded and coordinated the School of Labour at George Brown College in Toronto, and for over eight years, was the college's multicultural/anti-racism coordinator.[2] For her last four years at George Brown, she was part of a four-person team offering "Positive Space" workshops to bring visibility and support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two-spirit and queer/questioning students and staff.

Hynes has also taught creative non-fiction and personal narrative in the Creative Writing program at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies, and gives frequent workshops in poetry and creative writing.

She has also been an active member of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, a board member of Mayworks, Toronto's annual Festival of Working People and the Arts, and of the Centre for Study of Education and Work (CSEW) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.