SHIRLEY CAMIA

Shirley Camia is an award-winning, Filipina-Canadian poet whose work focuses on themes of identity, loss, and the diasporic experience.

She is the author of four collections of poetry: Mercy (Turnstone Press, 2019), a finalist at the High Plains Book Awards; Children Shouldn’t Use Knives (At Bay Press, 2017), shortlisted for a ReLit Award and winner of The Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Award at the Manitoba Book Awards, as well as an Honourable Mention at The Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada; the critically acclaimed The Significance of Moths (Turnstone Press, 2015); and Calliope (Libros Libertad, 2011).

Shirley’s work has been featured in publications such as Wasafiri, The New Quarterly, CV2, The Ex-Puritan, and TAYO, as well as anthologies such as Composed: Anthology of Poetry 2024 (Three Ocean Press, 2024), Endlessly Rocking (Unbound Content, 2019), and My Lot is a Sky (Math Paper Press, 2018). Her poems have also been featured in the media, on the BBC World Service, CBC Radio, the Winnipeg Free Press, among others.

Her work was selected by Di Brandt, Winnipeg’s inaugural Poet Laureate, for Winnipeg Words, a literary project celebrating the poetry of nine poets, featured on public transit and libraries across the city. One of her poems was recited during a keynote speech by renowned Filipina author, feminist, and activist Ninotchka Rosca at a conference in Toronto in 2011.

She has shared her work across Canada, the US, and Denmark, and has been awarded grants and funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the League of Canadian Poets.

She is the director behind the poetry films, ‘What You can’t Take with You’ and ‘Novena,’ which have been selected as official screenings for festivals in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Greece, Guam, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, and the US.

She is also a founding member of Salaysay, formerly Pluma, a collective of Filipino/a/x writers from Toronto whose work spans genres and generations.

Born in Winnipeg, Shirley has lived across Canada, the Philippines, Japan, Kenya, Denmark, and Switzerland.