Joanne Leow grew up in Singapore and worked for a time as a broadcast journalist, television news presenter and producer with Channel NewsAsia in Singapore. Leow holds a BA in Comparative Literature and International Relations from Brown University, an MA in Literary Studies from the National University of Singapore, and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Toronto. At present, Leow holds a Canada Research Chair and is appointed as an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University. She lives on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. In addition to academic writings, Leow has published poetry, essays and fiction in literary magazines.
Poetry
Seas Move Away
Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 2022.
PS8623.E599 S43 2022
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Meditating on exile, loss, diaspora, authoritarian law, and altered ecologies, Joanne Leow’s debut collection spans from the would-be Eden of hyper-planned and surveilled Singapore to an uneasy settling in the Canadian Prairies, seeking answers to the question of what is lost in intensive urban development and the journey across continents. Reflecting on relationships between lovers, parents and children, state and citizen, land and body, seas move away asks what we owe each other across borders and what endures in times of great flux and irreversible ecological change.
Awards and Honours
2023 Saskatchewan Book Awards–First Book Award (Finalist)
Non-fiction
Exhumations: Inside the Body of a Petrostate.
Toronto: Alchemy Knopf Canada, 2026.