Sandra Ridley claims she is “always a wheat farm girl,” but this Ottawa writer has already garnered considerable notice as a poet of range and sophistication. She has received the bpNichol Chapbook Award, the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, and has been a two–time finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines, including Fiddlehead, the Antigonish Review, Grain, New Quarterly, and Prairie Fire.

Sandra’s first book of poetry, Fallout—about the legacy of the nuclear age, rural life, family, and grief—won the Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing, and a selection from it was produced and broadcast by CBC Radio One.

She explores the themes of sickness, healing, isolation, and regeneration in her stunning new collection, Post–Apothecary—a work inspired, in part, by a visit to an abandoned TB sanitarium in Saskatchewan, her home province. “Place…sets tone and atmosphere, generates image, and carries its own language,” she says. “For me, it informs the whole process of writing.”

Photo Credit: E. Slankis

Website: www.pedlarpress.com