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Triny Finlay

Triny Finlay

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Triny Finlay (she/they) is a queer and genderfluid poet, scholar, teacher, and mother. Their books include Splitting Off, Histories Haunt Us, and Myself A Paperclip, which won the 2022 New Brunswick Book Award for Poetry. They teach English and Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, on the unceded and unsurrendered homelands of Wolastoqiyik. Photo credit: Thérèse Trofimencoff

Myself A Paperclip

Leaving a drawer open in here is like leaving your fly undone is like letting a scab hang off a healing wound. In Myself A Paperclip, Finlay sketches the internal self and the external whir of the psychiatric ward, laying bare its daily rhythms. Memories, musings, echoes, and meditations on stigma coalesce: quarters dispensed into a payphone to listen to the stunned silence of a partner; Splenda packets and rice pudding hoarded in dresser drawers; counting back from ten as electrodes connect with the temple. Deeply personal and reflective, Myself A Paperclip confronts abuse and experiences with debilitating mental illnesses, therapies, and hospitalizations, all shaped into the remarkable form of a serial long poem.
28
April 2026

Cross-Genre Writing: a workshop with Triny Finlay, Rebecca Salazar and Kasia Van Schaik

This creative writing workshop explores cross-genre practices as spaces of experimentation, hybridity, and formal freedom. Drawing on the work and experience of Triny Finlay and the other hosts, the session invites participants to reflect on how texts move between genres (fiction, poetry, essay, performance, or theory) and what such crossings make possible in terms of voice, structure, and meaning. The workshop will combine discussion and creative prompts, encouraging writers to think beyond fixed categories and to experiment with genre as a dynamic, porous practice.