Lisa Moore

Lisa Moore (born March 28, 1964) is an internationally acclaimed Canadian novelist, short-story writer, and creative writing professor whose vivid, texturally rich, and hyper-sensory prose has established her as a defining voice in contemporary Atlantic Canadian literature. Born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, she studied fine arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before returning to her home province to develop her craft as a member of the influential Burning Rock Collective. She vaulted into the national literary spotlight with her 2005 debut masterpiece, Alligator, a fiercely energetic breakout hit set in the criminal underworld and grief-cloaked corners of St. John's that won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Canada and Caribbean region and earned a prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize nomination. Renowned for her striking ability to capture emotional and physical extremes, Moore has built a brilliant, award-winning track record that includes the Scotiabank Giller Prize-finalist and Longlisted Man Booker Prize novel February (winner of CBC's Canada Reads), the 1970s drug-smuggling thriller Caught (which she co-adapted into a major CBC television series), and the critically adored multi-generational drama This Is How We Love. A versatile and deeply socially engaged creator, she has also authored the young adult novel Flannery, co-written an opera libretto, and won the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award for her overall body of work. She continues to expand her literary footprint by transitioning into creative non-fiction, earning a 2024 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize nomination for Invisible Prisons: Jack Whalen’s Tireless Fight for Justice, a deeply moving collaboration charting a real-life survivor's quest to expose historical solitary confinement abuse of children, which she supports through public advocacy lectures and her ongoing faculty role at Memorial University of Newfoundland.