Liz Harmer is a Canadian writer, editor & teacher living in California
Her second novel, Strange Loops, a “propulsive, darkly gripping novel about the power and paradoxes of human longing, faith, trauma, and taboo” was released with Knopf Canada in 2023. Her first novel, The Amateurs, a speculative novel of technological rapture, came out in 2018. After receiving starred reviews in PW and Q&Q, The Amateurs was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award.
Her stories, essays, and poems have been published widely. In 2019 her suite of poems was runner-up to Image Journal’s Mitchell Prize in Poetry. The winner of a National Magazine Award in Personal Journalism and the CRAFT Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction, she has also been included in the Best Canadian Stories 2018, a finalist for the Journey Prize, and shortlisted for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Liz writes about desire, madness, motherhood, and religion. She is at work on an award-winning memoir of mental illness and a new novel, both of which have received support from Canada Council for the arts.
In addition to her other workshop leadership, she’s taught creative writing at the BFA and MFA program at Chapman University and is currently an instructor at the Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop and the LOFT Literary Center.
A warm, dynamic speaker, Liz is available for interviews, book chats and lectures, as well as to do one-on-one coaching, manuscript consultation, and copyediting.