WRITER | EDITOR | MUSICIAN
Conyer Clayton is a queer, disabled writer, editor, musician, and arts educator from Kentucky who now calls Ottawa home. She is the creator of But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. (A Feed Dog Book by Anvil Press, 2022, Longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Raymond Souster Award), We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020, Winner of the Ottawa Book Award), the solo EP Further Behind You, and many other solo and collaborative chapbooks, musical, and hybrid releases. They are the winner of The Capilano Review's 2019 Robin Blaser Poetry Prize and Arc Poetry Magazine's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, and their collaborative chapbook with Manahil Bandukwala, Sprawl | the time it took us to forget (Collusion Books, 2020) was shortlisted for the 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her poetry, essays, and criticism appear in Room Magazine, filling station, Best Canadian Poetry 2023, Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, The Capilano Review and others.
In addition to their freelance editorial work, where they are available to hire to work in poetry, non-fiction, fiction, hybrid works, grant writing, and more, Conyer is the Nonfiction Editor for untethered magazine and a Poetry Editor for Augur. She is also the Social Media Coordinator for Canthius. She teaches poetry to all ages through Poetry in Voice, and offers workshops to a range of ages and levels. Please get in touch if you'd like her to work with you, your writing group, or students.
Conyer is a member of the creative collective, VII:
VII is seven voices fused into one exquisite corpse: Manahil Bandukwala, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Conyer Clayton, nina jane drystek, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre and Helen Robertson. Based on the belief that seven minds are better than one and that many ideas make joyous chorus, we say: We are I and I is VII. Formed in March 2020, VII is based in Ottawa, Ontario, the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg First Nation. Their debut chapbook, Towers, was published in Spring 2021 with Collusion Books. Their second chapbook is holy disorder of being (Gap Riot Press, 2022).
Conyer's work has been generously funded by the Ontario Arts Council, The League of Canadian Poets, Canada Council for the Arts, and The Writer's Union of Canada.
