Douglas Walbourne-Gough

Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted status member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation from Elmastukwek (the Bay of Islands), Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). His poetry and reviews have been published throughout Canada, and his poetry has garnered several awards and grants, recently winning the 2022 Riddle Fence poetry prize and a Professional Projects grant from ArtsNL. Douglas has won the NL Arts and Letters Award five times and has twice served as the Award’s adjudicator. Most recently, he served as Memorial University’s Fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence.

His first collection, Crow Gulch, was published with Goose Lane Editions in 2019, has been nominated for several awards, and won the 2021 EJ Pratt Poetry Award. His second collection, Island, centres around the Newfoundland Mi’kmaq experience in the wake of the Qalipu enrolment process and is forthcoming in Fall 2024, also from Goose Lane Editions. Colour Work, a chapbook of poetry, is forthcoming from Anstruther Press in February 2024. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC Okanagan) and a PhD in English/Creative Writing (UNB Fredericton).