I’m a writer and new father and former English professor who recently moved to San Francisco. Raised in southwestern Ontario, I’ve lived and worked around the Great Lakes region: planting pulp-and-paper forests west of Superior, shuffling portable classrooms throughout the Golden Horseshoe, and teaching writing on the third coast in Chicago. On the page, I’m drawn to the backdrop of a story, its landscape and location, or what the Midwestern writer Michael Martone calls, “the ground situation.” I’ve written about land and river histories, family stories, and matters of spirituality and the environment. I think the stories we tell from the places we live are, for better or for worse, world-making and therefore worthy of our great attention.

I studied English and history at Western University and hold an MA in Literature from McMaster University. From 2011-2017, I taught English at Truman College (City Colleges of Chicago) where I also served as Learning Communities Coordinator and Chair of Assessment. For two years, I lived in rural Massachusetts, pacing between my writing desk and the refrigerator, while my partner completed a research fellowship. In August 2019, we moved cross-country to San Francisco where I’m currently elbows-deep in the travails of cloth diapering an eight-month-old baby.

Contact:
E | gmartin9 [at] gmail [dot] com
T | @gmartin9