Hollyhock Presenters

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Our presenters are curated for their quality, depth, integrity, and alignment with our educational purpose. Since 1982, a distinguished faculty of authors, educators, activists, artists, performers, and practitioners have shared their work at our Cortes Island campus and in Vancouver.

People smiling at Activate 2023 Hollyhock Leadership Institute

Kyo Maclear

Kyo Maclear is an essayist, novelist, editor and children’s author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages, published in over twenty-five countries, optioned for theatre and television, and garnered nominations from the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and the National Magazine Awards. Her nonfiction books include the hybrid memoir Birds Art Life (2017), winner of the Trillium Book Award, and Unearthing (Knopf and Scribner, 2023). She holds an MA (Cultural Studies and Education/OISE, University of Toronto) and a PhD (Environmental Humanities/York University). In addition to the University of Guelph, she has also taught creative writing with Humber School for Writers and Banff Centre for the Arts. Kyo lives in Tkaronto/Toronto where she is an editor-at-large with Tundra Books/Penguin Random House Canada and curates a collection called CRAFT.