Natural Disasters is the first poetry collection from Andrea MacPherson. It explores memory and history, asking if it is possible to inherit the past and the generational complexities that come along with it. Stories of lost sisters and marriages based on card games combine with the immediate and personal responses to wild fires and collapsed schoolhouses. The collection is also concerned with place, from the dry land of the interior of British Columbia to the rugged beauty of the west coast shoreline. These settings affect not only language and mood, but tangible links to the past, the “dusky valleys” and “planks stained with fish blood”. Here, the tragic mingles with the everyday, allowing shadowy figures and hazy memory to once again become real.

Andrea MacPherson is the author of six books: three novels, What We Once Believed, Beyond the Blue, and When She Was Electric, and three poetry collections, Ellipses, Away, and Natural Disasters. When She Was Electric placed number 6 on CBC Canada Reads: People’s Choice, and Natural Disasters was longlisted for the ReLit Awards.

Her poetry was anthologized in the UK publication, How the Light Gets In, and she has been a runner up in both Grain Magazine’s Short Grain Award, and Prism International’s Poetry Award.

Born in Vancouver, Andrea was raised in the lower mainland. Andrea holds an MFA from the Creative Writing Department at the University of British Columbia, where she was Editor of Prism International. She has also acted as the Reviews Editor for Event Magazine. Currently an Associate Professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, Andrea teaches creative writing and literature.

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