¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥

Skip to main content

Mary Johnson

Biography

Mary Johnson is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥. She is primarily interested in creative writing and children's literature, with a focus on ecofeminist approaches to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century girls' fiction.

Research Interests

Ecocriticism (particularly ecofeminism); climate and environmental humanities; genre fiction; food studies; girlhood and body image; animal studies; mental health; coming-of-age stories; Victorian and Edwardian literature; juvenilia. 

Selected Publications

Conferences 

2024: Spooktastic Book Festival, Boston
Panel: Writing Horror for Children 

2024: International Young Scholars' Conference, University of Stettin (Virtual Conference)
Panel: Representations of Animal Bodies and the More-than-Human World
Paper: Unscientific Creatures: Becoming Girl, Becoming Animal in 19th and Early 20th Century Children’s Literature

2023: ACCUTE, York University, Ontario
Panel: When the Body Speaks: Expressions of Bodily Pain in Creative Writing 
Paper: What Does It Mean For A Body To Be Wrong?: Dysmorphia and Healing in Children's Verse Novels

2021: Research Ethics Conference, University of Exeter (Virtual Conference) 
Poster: I Dream Regardless: Ethics, Ambition, and Emergent Genres in Adolescent Fiction

2021: Kaleidoscope, University of Cambridge (Virtual Conference) 
Theme: Responding to Ruptures: Speaking Back to Power
Poster: Darkly, Academia: Reclamations of Power in the Transgressive Spaces of Young Adult Literature

Academic Publications 

[Forthcoming]: "All The Wild Was Ready To Make Friends: Ecofeminist Childhoods in Barbara Newhall Follett's The House Without Windows." Chapter in Women Who Write Animals: Female Literary Representations of the More-Than-Human World, edited by Lorraine Kerslake and Diana Villanueva. Brill Press. 

[Forthcoming]: "Render Her A Tempting Morsel: Unholy Appetites and Disordered Bodies in Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire." Chapter in Disability and the Vampire, edited by Brooke Cameron and Drumlin Crape. Routledge. 

[Accepted]: "The Scientific Fairy Tales of Lewis Carroll and John Cargill Brough." Chapter in Bugs and 19th Century Eco-Literatureedited by Brooke Cameron and Michaela Wipond. 

Short Fiction/Poetry 

2024: "wound maintenance." The Angle. Summer 2024. 

2024: "heartwood genesis." ROOM Magazine. Issue 46.4. 

2022: "Last House." FreeFall Magazine. vol. 32. no.1. (Environmental Special Issue)

Novels

[Forthcoming] 2025: The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House

2024: The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, Razorbill/Penguin Random House

Awards and Recognition
Canada Council for the Arts: Research and Creation Grant, 2024
CWC Sustaining Shared Futures Writing Award (Poetry Winner), 2024
SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, 2023-2027
Alfred Bader Fellowship in the Humanities, 2022-2023
Queen's Graduate Award, 2022-2023
Simms Prize, 2021
Florence Staniforth Fiction Prize, 2021
Rosalind Hulet Petch Memorial Award, 2018
UVIC Excellence Scholarship, 2016-2020
Areas of Study
Ecocriticism and Animal Studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Mental Health Studies
Genres and Forms
Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Creative Writing
Poetry and Poetics
Popular and Genre Fiction

Department of English, Queen's University

Watson Hall
49 Bader Lane
Kingston ON K7L 3N6
Canada

Telephone (613) 533-2153

Undergraduate

Graduate

¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ is situated on traditional Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territory.