In the arena, she shot cigarettes and coins from her trusting husband’s hand. Some women wished she would miss. —from “Little Sure Shot”

Kat Cameron’s poetry illuminates the unsung perspectives of the women of the West, creating a compelling narrative that reflects the poet’s own struggles with sorrow. She conjures ghosts and weaves together insights on loss, memory, and the impacts of boom and bust.

Kat Cameron was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick and has worked for two years as an ESL teacher in Japan. Her debut collection of poetry, Strange Labyrinth, was published by Oolichan Books in 2015. Her fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in over fifty journals and anthologies in Canada and the United States, including The Antigonish Review, Canadian Literature, Descant, The Fiddlehead, Forage, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, NonBinary Review, Paperplates, Prairie Fire, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, Room, subTerrain, 40 Below: Volume 2, and Beyond Forgetting: Celebrating 100 Years of Al Purdy. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry and FreeFall’s Prose and Poetry contest. She teaches English literature and writing at Concordia University of Edmonton.

Kat Cameron's profile page

• Winner, High Plains Book Awards
• Short-listed, Stephan G. Stephanson Award for Poetry, Writers Guild of Alberta

"[Cameron elucidates] aspects of living in Alberta: the boom-bust madnesses, the burns and floods, the Timmy Ho rednecks, the city scavengers and the sweet cricket fields.... Cameron’s poems simmer with a quiet ire amid their gentle songs." [Full review at https://crowgirl11.wordpress.com/2020/03/25/kat-camerons-ghosts-still-linger-u-of-a-press-and-kim-goldbergs-devolution-caitlin-press/]

Marrow Reviews

"The historical West was lawless and degenerate.... Kat Cameron is haunted by the experiences of those least among us, commoners of the Western prairies, especially women, and her searing work will not let us forget their grief."

Matt Sutherland, Foreword Magazine, July / August 2020

"From prairie history to cultural considerations such as the Edmonton Oilers and Alberta bumper stickers, Cameron’s poems examine what occurs when life gets caught up against external forces, attempting to articulate the ghosts of what has been lost, and what may have been set aside, writing out a confluence of women from Alberta to Wyoming, through boom and bust, through hope and loss and sadness and grief. These are characters that fight to remain standing, something that, at times, is either all or more than they are capable of." [Full review at https://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2020/08/kit-cameron-ghosts-still-linger.html]

rob mclennan