About

 
Anna floating in a pond wearing a striped black and white shirt, holding a bunch of yellow flowers and looking at them. Trees and green grass in the background.
Photo by Britt

Anna Swanson (she/her) is a queer Jewish writer and librarian. She recently completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives in St. John’s on the island of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), where she buys books for the public library and works as a poetry editor for Riddle Fence Magazine. Her special interests include collective liberation and wild swimming in all seasons.

Her most recent book, The Garbage Poems (Brick Books, 2025), won a 2026 Lambda Literary Award, was shortlisted Raymond Souster Award, and was longlisted for the Winterset Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Her first book, The Nights Also (Tightrope Books, 2010), won the Gerald Lampert Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has been widely published in journals and appears in anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry, On Occasion, Impact: Women Writing After Concussion, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, and Torah: A Women’s Commentary.

She is currently working on a poetry project that reckons with Jewish inheritance, including the ways Jewish trauma and safety are being weaponized to justify an ongoing genocide. The poems in this project re-imagine liturgical texts and explore embodied Jewish rituals as potential sites of solidarity, healing, and resistance.

Awards:

  • Lambda Award for Bisexual Poetry, Winner, 2026
  • Raymond Souster Award, Shortlist, 2026
  • Pat Lowther Award, Longlist, 2026
  • Winterset Award, Longlist, 2026
  • CBC Poetry Prize, Shortlist, 2023
  • Arc Award of Awesomeness, 2022
  • Sparks Literary Festival Poetry Competition, Winner, 2020
  • Newfoundland and Labrador Arts & Letters Award for Poetry, 2018
  • CBC Poetry Prize, Shortlist, 2015
  • Arc Poem of the Year, Shortlist & Editor’s Choice, 2015
  • Lambda Award for Lesbian Poetry, Winner, 2011
  • Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry, Winner, 2011
  • Lina Chartrand Award for Poetry (CV2), Winner, 2009
  • PRISM International Student Poetry Contest, First Place, 2007
  • Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry, Honourable Mention, 2004