Donna Kane is a writer who divides her time between Rolla, BC and Halifax, NS. Her poems, short fiction, reviews and essays have been published widely in journals such as Science Today, Scientific American, The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, and The Malahat Review, as well as in several anthologies including Best Canadian Poetry 2013 (Tightrope Books, 2013), I Found it at the Movies: An Anthology of Film Poems (Guernica Press 2014), In This Together: Fifteen True Stories of Real Reconciliation (Brindle and Glass, 2016), Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight (University of Arizona Press, 2020) and, most recently, Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2022). She has published four books of poetry, Somewhere, a Fire, (Hagios Press, 2004), and Erratic (Hagios Press, 2007), both finalists for the ReLit Award, Orrery (Harbour, 2020), a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Asterisms (Harbour, 2024). She is also the recipient of the Lina Chartrand Poetry Award (2000) and in 2010 she was a winner in Geist’s Annual Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest. Her poetry has been featured on CBC’s Daybreak North and North by Northwest, and in 2011, her poem, Summer Solstice, was featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. “The Gaze,” one of the chapters from Summer of the Horse (Harbour Publishing, 2018) was shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and published in the 2016 summer issue of The New Quarterly. An excerpt from Orrery, was published as a chapbook titled Pioneer 10, I Hear You by JackPine Press in October, 2016.
Kane began her education at Northern Lights College in Dawson Creek where she received the Governor General Collegiate Bronze Medal. In 2009 Kane completed her BA with a major in writing with Distinction from the University of Victoria with elective credits in philosophy. In both years at UVic, she received the President’s Scholarship. In 2014 she completed an MFA from UBC for which she received a SSHRC Joseph Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship and UBC’s Faculty of Arts Graduate Award. She has also received Banff Writing Studio Scholarships (2000, 2003, 2005, 2011), a Canada Council for the Arts Individual Writing Grant (2008, 2021), and several BC Arts Council Creative Writing Grants (2005, 2008, 2015).
While executive director of the Peace Liard Regional Arts Council (2014-2021), Kane carried out several projects, including “Emergence,” a public art sculpture permanently displayed at the NAR Park in Dawson Creek. Kane has also served as sessional instructor teaching English and Creative Writing at Northern Lights College. While at the University of Victoria, Kane served on the editorial board for poetry at the Malahat Review.
In 2001, Kane established Writing on the Ridge (WOTR), a non-profit society aimed at fostering the arts in northeast BC. Through WOTR, she has hosted nearly 100 Canada Council funded readings, organized the first writer-in-residence program at Northern Lights College (2005 with Jeanette Lynes), and created the Moberly Lake Writing Retreats (1999 and 2000 with mentors Patrick Lane, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky). She co-founded the Festival of the Sweetwater Moon which continued until 2017 as the Sweetwater905 Festival, attracting audiences of over 600 to the working farm of Emilie and Larry Mattson in Rolla, BC. This three-day event featured literary arts, music, visual art, and film. In 2006, she co-founded the Muskwa-Kechika Artist Camps aimed at raising awareness of the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area. The camps attracted visual artists from across North America including Derek Houston, Peter von Tiesenhausen, and Brian Jungen, and writers such as John Vaillant, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, Sue Sinclair, and Elizabeth Bachinsky.
In 2008, she was commissioned by the City of Dawson Creek to direct Written in Stone, a collaborative poetry project where lines of a renga were engraved into stones along Dawson Creek’s walking trail. In 2007, she initiated and worked with the City of Dawson Creek to oversee the official naming of “Roy Forbes Drive.” In 2009, she received the Aurora Award of Distinction: Arts and Culture for her contributions to the arts in the Peace-Liard area and in 2020 received an Honorary Associate of Arts Degree from Northern Lights College “in recognition for her passion towards the literary arts and her continuing ability to inspire others.” In 2021, Kane received the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship for her “exceptional dedication to discover community potential and empower ownership through arts and culture.”