Benjamin Ghan
Positions
PhD Candidate
Contact information
Background
Biography
Ben Berman Ghan is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary, where he specializes in queer theory, eco-criticism, and posthumanism in speculative fiction. His debut collection of fiction, What We See in the Smoke, was published by Crowsnest Books in 2019, his novella Visitation Seeds was published by 845 Press in 2020, and his novel The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits was published with Buckrider Books in 2024. He is the editor of Bruce Meyer: Essays on His Works, published 2025 with Guernica Editions, and his second collection of fiction, The Library Cosmic, is forthcoming with Buckrider Books in 2026. His prose, poetry, and essays have previously been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, Filling Station Magazine, The Blasted Tree Publishing Co., Pinhole Poetry, and The Ancilliary Review of Books
Projects
A gorgeously complex work of literary speculative fiction that spans centuries The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits starts in 2014 with a winged alien sowing the seeds of a strange forest on the moon. The novel then moves through humanity’s colonization of the moon and its consequences, onto a war with alien beings within a space-going whale, a cyborg mind that sleeps for hundreds of years after sheltering the city of Toronto from the worst of the war and finally a re-creation of humanity. Ghan poses thoughtful questions about artificial intelligence, humanities quest for the stars and ecological destruction in this wide-ranging story, which is held together equally by beautiful writing and deft characterization. The end result is an ambitious debut that leaves the reader contemplating many amazing possibilities for the future of our world.
Awards
- Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship, The University of Calgary. 2022
- MacKenzie-Hicks Graduate Scholarship, The University of Calgary. 2022
- The Special Woodhouse Prize for English, The University of Toronto. 2019
- The Samuel James Stubbs Fellowship, The University of Toronto. 2019
- Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarships(AGES) - Doctoral Research, The University of Calgary. 2023
- Faculty of Graduate Studies Doctoral Scholarship, The University of Calgary. 2023
- Charles R. Steele Memorial Scholarship, The University of Calgary. 2023
- Kathleen and Russell Lane Canadian Writing Scholarship, The University of Calgary. 2024
- MacKenzie-Hicks Graduate Scholarship, The University of Calgary. 2024
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