Canary

Character-driven fiction of broad literary appeal, with gay and lesbian subthemes. While a number of figures struggle or have struggled with their sexuality in these stories, they struggle equally with being poor, young, with bad relationships, etc.; the stories are not "about" gay identity per se. A number involve quirky portraits of fringe evangelical types Many stories about gay life in small-town America follow the Matthew-Shepard-Angels-in-America line, are often about gay men or boys, and end in violence: these are stories set in poorer neighborhoods and homes, often Christian ones, but they don't have the same tragic tone. Here the characters have found tolerance (if not acceptance), and what intolerance there is tends to come from within the self. Focus tends to be on lesbians. Her fiction has appeared in The Puritan, Grain, filling Station, Plenitude and Prairie Fire. Her short story Ashes” was selected for the Journey Prize Anthology in 2012. Cullen is also the author of three critically acclaimed collections of poetry with Frontenac House Press. Her first collection, Science Fiction Saint, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the Writers Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Alberta Publishers Trade Book Award. Her second collection Pearl was shortlisted for the W.O. Mitchell Calgary Book Prize and won the Alberta Publishers Trade Book Award. A transplanted westerner, Cullen lives in Toronto with her partner and children. She is at work on a novel and a fourth collection of poetry.