A young woman with glasses in a brown dress in the Taylor Institute

Amy Janna LeBlanc

Pronouns: She/Her

Positions

Doctoral Candidate

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Sessional Instructor

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Contact information

Email

Web presence

Website

Location

Office: SS1050

Background

Educational Background

M.A. English, University of Calgary , 2021

B. Ed. Secondary English Language Arts, University of Calgary , 2019

B.A. Honours English and Creative Writing, University of Calgary , 2017

Biography

Amy LeBlanc is a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary where she researches the intersections of haunted house literature, folk gothic narratives, and chronic illness. She is a poet and fiction writer with publications in Room, Arc, The Fiddlehead, Funicular, Canadian Literature, CV2, CMAJ, PRISM International, and the Literary Review of Canada among others. Her second full-length poetry collection, I used to live here, is forthcoming with the Porcupine's Quill in April 2025. She has been a finalist for the ReLit award, the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, the BPAA Trade Fiction Book of the Year Award, and an AMPA Showcase Award in poetry. Amy is a recipient of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award, a SSHRC CGS-D award and the Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Medal. She is a 2022-2024 Killam Laureate. 

Recent and forthcoming publications: 
Articles: 
  • "Think about what you don’t get to see”: Reading Ghosts and Unnatural Narration in Leanne Shapton’s Guestbook" forthcoming in The Journal of Narrative Theory (56.1), 2026.
  • "(De)composing Gothicism: Disturbing the (eco-)Gothic in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle," co-authored with Leah Van Dyk, Studies in American Fiction, 2024.
  • "Gothic Gaming: The Ill Body and the Haunted House in Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy," in Game Studies, 2024. 
Book chapters: 
  •  "The Uncanny and Doubling Horror of Childhood: Abject Disruptions in Stranger Things," Black Witches & Queer Ghosts: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in Teen Supernatural Serials (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). 
  • "‘Do you trust your friends?’: Horror, Narrative Authority, and Parkdale Haunt" forthcoming in Aural Chills and Sounds of Terror: Podcasting Horror. Edited by Laura Álvarez Trigo and Anna Marta Marini.
  • “Love and Queerness at the End of the World: The Collective Catharsis of Sad Girl Music,” co-authored with Ryanne Kap, forthcoming in Music In/As Literature (Lexington Books).
Creative work:  
  • "Letter to a Young Arachnid" (poem) forthcoming in The New Quarterly, 2025.
  • "Someone is Dead," (short story), forthcoming in ReVisions: Speculating in Literature and Film in Canada (University of Toronto Press, edited by Wendy Roy), 2025. 
  • "A Moment of Mourning Suspended in Air" (poem), Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2024.
  • "Murine" (poem), in The Fiddlehead, 2023.
  • "Fulmination," (poem),  Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review, 2024.
  • "The witch gets sick and her stomach is full of hair" (poem), THIS Magazine, 2024.

Research

Areas of Research

Gothicism
  • Canadian Gothic Literature 
  • Haunted House Literature 
  • Horror Media 
  • Videogames 
Disability Studies
Creative Writing

Participation in university strategic initiatives

Human dynamics in a changing world

Courses

Course number Course title Semester
ENGL 336.04 Creative Writing: Across the Genres Spring 2024
ENGL 436.05 Popular Genre Writing Fall 2024
ENGL 251 Literature and Society Winter 2025

Awards

  • Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee Medal, Nominated by the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards. 2023
  • Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, Killam Trusts. 2022
  • CGS-D Award , SSHRC. 2021
  • Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta . 2020
  • Eyes High Doctoral Recruitment Award , Faculty of Graduate Studies . 2021
  • Kathleen and Russell Lane Canadian Writing Scholarship, 2020
  • CGS-M Joseph Bombardier Scholarship, SSHRC. 2020
  • Master's Research Scholarship, Faculty of Graduate Studies . 2020

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