Leslie Vryenhoek

Leslie Vryenhoek is a St. John’s-based writer, editor and communications consultant. She currently works for the research-policy network WIEGO—Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing. She is also an editor on Riddle Fence: A Journal of Arts and Culture and director of  Piper`s Frith: Writing at Kilmory, an annual intensive writing retreat held in Newfoundland in October. 

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Leslie immigrated to Canada  as a young woman, and moved to Newfoundland six years ago.

Her poetry, fiction and memoir have appeared in magazines and journals across Canada and internationally and have won several awards, including the Winston Collins-Descant Best Canadian Poem, the Eden Mills fiction contest and two Newfoundland and Labrador Arts & Letters Awards. Her first book, Scrabble Lessons, is a collection of short fiction published by Oolichan Books in 2009. Gulf, published in spring 2011, also by Oolichan Books, is a poetry collection that explores longing and displacement in a transient culture, and the incremental steps in a journey toward belonging.