Ava Woolf

Ava Woolf is a queer neurodiverse writer based in Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland. Differently abled and sensitized through chronic incurable pain, she works at the intersection of queer identity, ecology, storytelling, and ancestral reclamation.

Woolf holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Calgary, and a BA Honours in History of Art, Design, & Visual Culture from the University of Alberta. The onset of severe fibromyalgia in her mid-twenties prevented her from pursuing conventional graduate studies, and she is now an independent scholar and published novelist. Quill & Quire described her debut novel, House of Ash ( published under her former name Hope Cook) as “powerful…a well-crafted novel firmly rooted in character and history that will ensure readers never think of a haunted house the same way again.”

She is the recipient of two Canada Council for the Arts grants, four ArtsNL grants, and a Summer Writing Residency at the Banff Centre for her current project Dead Days, a coming of age novel that incorporates nature-centric wisdom traditions from her slavic and celtic heritage to create/reclaim a lost/erased queer space within those ancestries and mythologies. Her work is rooted in deep sensitivity to the body, and in listening to the other than human kin.