Joy Russell

Born in Belize, Joy Russell is a writer and poet living in North Vancouver on the unceded traditional territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations. Her writing has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council and has appeared in numerous publications, literary journals and anthologies in North America, the UK and Caribbean, including Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, The Caribbean Writer, The Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry, Red: Contemporary Black British Poetry, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English, (2007, 2017). Her PodPlay, Days of Old (Neworld Theatre/PTC), highlighted Strathcona’s Black community and her work as a researcher and assistant producer for the television documentaries in London, UK, includes Rebel Music: The Bob Marley Story, Pump Up the Volume and BAFTA-nominated, The Hip Hop Years. Currently an MA student in the Department of Geography at SFU, her thesis focuses on the segregation policies at Crystal Pool, a former public swimming pool in the West End, and “Brown Skin Beach” in Kitsilano, a potential alternative recreational site. Research-based, her writing and work explores the intersection of meta and micro narratives, colonization, racialization, resistance, and creative life-making and place-making in local and broader histories.