Lexie Angelo (PhD Candidate)

Thesis title: Criminal spaces: Examining postcolonial Gothic places and their effect on criminality in contemporary Canadian detective novels.

Biography

Background

Lexie Angelo is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. She is a two-time recipient of the Sir James Lougheed award from the Government of Alberta and was shortlisted for the New Writer’s Award by the Scottish Book Trust in 2024.

 

Her chapbook A Rough Season was released in 2020 by Loft on Eighth Press. Additionally, her work has also appeared in Write Magazine, Gutter Magazine, Neon Books, and The Selkie Publications CIC. In 2021, an exhibition of her historical fiction work on Chinatown was hosted at the Lougheed House museum in Calgary, AB.  In 2018, she was the recipient of the Carlyle Norman Scholarship for Emerging Literary Artists Endowment, and was awarded a residency at The Banff Centre with award-winning writer Ayelet Tsabari. Since then, she’s received grant funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Calgary Arts Development. She is a member of the Writer's Union of Canada, Crime Writers of Canada, Society of Young Publishers, and Society of Authors. She teaches at the University of Calgary and owns Radical Bookshop and Press. Follow her on social media @angelolexie or www.lexieangelo.com 

CV

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Qualifications

University of Edinburgh (2018)

Master of Science, First Class Distinction, Creative Writing

Thesis: Illustrating history as explored through revisionist historical fiction and testimonial life-writing in Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) and Dispossession (Simon Grennan).   

Royal Roads University (2014)

Bachelor of Arts, Communications

 

Responsibilities & affiliations

  • Crime Writers of Canada
  • Writers Guild of Alberta
  • Writer's Union of Canada
  • Society of Young Publishers, Scotland
  • Society of Authors, United Kingdom

Undergraduate teaching

Sessional Lecturer

University of Calgary

  • COMS 345 – Professional and Technical Communications

Mount Royal University

  • COMM 2845 – Financial Public Relations
  • COMM 1849 – Applied Writing 1

 

 

Postgraduate teaching

Postgraduate Teaching Assistant

Edinburgh Futures Institute

Courses

  • Narratives of Digital Capitalism, Course Organizers: Dr Pip Thornton, Dr Ben Collier
  • Writing Speculative Fiction, Course Organizers: Dr Jane Alexander, Dr Jane McKie
  • Strategic Change Leadership for Creative Industries, Course Organizer: Dr John Amis

Research summary

My primary research interests include:

  • Contemporary Gothic literature, with a focus on how the Gothic articulates cultural anxieties, national identity, and the uncanny.
  • The role of place, landscape, and spatial representation in narrative fiction drawing on geocriticism, literary geography, and spatial anthropology.
  • Narrative and aesthetic strategies of graphic storytelling, especially in relation to memoir and life-writing. This includes multimodal analysis, visual culture theory, and how how image and text co-produce meaning.
  • Crime narratives in relation to societal responses to Black Lives Matter, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and the Freedom Convoy in relation to its violent reassertion of colonialism on the landscape.
  • The intersection of creative writing and academic research, particularly through practice-based and practice-led methodologies.

I am available for peer reviews, book reviews and author interviews. 

 

Current research interests

I am currently researching liminal spaces and emotional engagement with nebulous places in creative writing, with a specific focus on the Canadian highway as a spatial geographic site suffused with colonial violence, unsettlement and the production of unease.

Knowledge exchange

Gifford Lecture Series 2024

I was invited to a knowledge exchange with the Gifford Lecture Series featuring Dr Cornel West where I participated in a roundtable discussion, and crafted a response to his third lecture titled Folly Presto. Dr West's oration linked Erasmus’ work, which is indicative of a deep friendship and model of love, with overcoming the catastrophic. And that such love connections are profoundly jazz-like. I connected Dr West's philosophy to my academic research on Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz, which grapples with forgiveness, maternal lineage, regret, and defining oneself while at the same time defining what it means to be black in Harlem and America. It was a great opportunity to partner with the School of Divinity on topics of religion, philosophy and tragedy which sit outside my typical research.  

Affiliated research centres

Project activity

Exhibitions

We Were Here: Stories From Early Chinatown, Calgary, AB 

  • The Lougheed House Museum July 1 - Oct 17, 2021
  • Heritage Park Gasoline Alley Jan 14 - April 30, 2022  

Special projects

  • Very Much Alive, anthology of Canadian writers and poets funded by Calgary Arts Development
  • Chinook Blast, collection of short stories published in partnership with Radical Books and the Calgary Central Library

Current project grants

Spring Into Research Methods Workshop
2025 - Liminal spaces: emotional engagement with nebulous places in creative writing (£2100)
Edinburgh Future’s Institute, 1 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh
Funded through the Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences (SGSSS)

Past project grants

Scottish Book Trust
New Writer’s Award 2024 - shortlisted

Government of Alberta
Sir James Lougheed Award 2023 ($20,000)
Sir James Lougheed Award 2024 ($20,000)

Alberta Foundation for the Arts
2021 Individual Artist Grant ($15,000)

The Banff Centre
2018 Carlyle Norman Scholarship ($8,000)

Calgary Arts Development
2019 Literary Arts Collective Grant ($15,000)
2021-2025 Microgrant for Artists x3 ($33,400)

Chinook Blast Artist Grant
2021 Radical Bookshop - ($7000)

Invited speaker

2025

  • Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference, London, England

2024

  • 17th Biannual Conference of the International Gothic Association, Halifax, NS
  • National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) Conference 2024

2023

  • Bloody Scotland, Pitch Perfect, Stirling, Scotland
  • MOTIVE Crime Writing Festival, Toronto, Canada
  • Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference, London, England

Organiser

  • Very Much Alive Anthology Launch, The Selkie Publications CIC, 2021

Participant

Upcoming

  • Digital Research Conference, January 29, 2025 John McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh

Previous

  • Gotham Writer's Conference New York, USA
  • Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Toronto, Canada
  • Society of Young Publishers Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Bloody Scotland, Crime Writer's Conference, Stirling, Scotland
  • Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • University of Edinburgh Book Publishing Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Man Booker 50 Conference, London, England
  • Manchester Metropolitan University Writing Fair, Manchester, England

Papers delivered

  • Writing a postcolonial space without its people: A study of Louise Penny's A Better Man July 2023, Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference London  
  • When the flood strikes: Ecological crisis and the garrison mentality in Louise Penny's A Better Man, August 2024, IGA Conference Halifax

  • Liminal spaces: emotional engagement with nebulous places in creative writing, Nov 2024, NAWE Conference

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