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

Amy LeBlanc

Pronouns: She/Her

Positions

Doctoral Candidate

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Sessional Instructor

Faculty of Arts, Department of English

Contact information

Email

ajleblan@ucalgary.ca

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, was published by 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). 
  • ““Buried alive and suffocating to death”: Body Horror and Gothic Embodiment in I Saw the TV Glow,” forthcoming in the Body Horror Handbook. Edited by Dr Subashish Bhattacharjee and Anik Sarkar. 
  • "‘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 (Edinburgh University Press). 
  • “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
ENGL 336.04 Across the Genres Fall 2025
ENGL 336.02 Fiction Winter 2026

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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