Laura Ritland

I am a poet, scholar, critic, and educator currently based in New York City.

I am the author of the poetry collection East and West, published with Montreal’s Véhicule Press in 2018, and the chapbook Marine Science, published with Toronto’s Anstruther Press. My poetry has been shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, won the Malahat Far Horizons Award in Poetry, and featured and anthologized in publications including In Fine Form (edited by Kate Braid and Sandy Shreve), The Walrus, Canadian Notes & Queries, Maisonneuve, The Fiddlehead, and The Malahat Review. 

I hold a B.A. (hons) in English and Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow at New York University where I teach in Liberal Studies—an interdisciplinary liberal arts college with a transnational and global focus.

My scholarship focuses on Victorian, 20th-century British, and Global Anglophone literature, with special interest in literary theory, empire, and critical university studies. My current research project explores the intersections between adult education movements and the evolution of literary studies. Some of this work has appeared in the academic journals Feminist Modernist Studies and Cultural Critique.

Raised on the traditional and unceded Coast Salish territories known as Vancouver, British Columbia, I currently live on Lanapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people known today as New York City.