Echoing the pandemic-era phrase “shelter in place,” and extending beyond it, this collection examines how writing can create, illuminate, and complicate ideas about dwelling, belonging, or finding safe harbour. Through an engaging blend of academic essays and creative nonfiction, contributors interrogate the connections between the concepts of shelter and text, centering questions of care, disability, and housing inequality. How does the physical infrastructure of the city interact with literary form and how do stories bring attention to our built environments? Did the experience of lockdown (re)shape our interiorities, imaginations, and reading habits? Can Indigenous and decolonial approaches to land and storytelling and an inclusive practice of shelter-making through narrative enable a more sustainable future? While many of the works and writers discussed in the volume are Canadian, the scope extends beyond national borders to create a transnational dialogue on diverse and non-traditional approaches to topics of land, space, and shelter. Shelter in Text will appeal to literary scholars, particularly those working in the fields of Canadian literature, Indigenous studies, contemporary literature, ecocriticism, gothic fiction, Queer studies, feminist studies, disability studies, translation, and literary theory.

Contributors: Kelly Baron, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Myra Bloom, David Chariandy, Lily Cho, Sophie Feng, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Kristi Leora Gansworth, Sarah Gordon, Shannon Griffin-Merth, Anna Guttman, Heather Jessup, Andrew David King, Caroline Lavoie, Jennifer Lawn, Jessi MacEachern, Kayla Penteliuk, Anil Pradhan, Geneviève Robichaud, Kasia Van Schaik, Holly Vestad, Erin Wunker, and Robert Zacharias.