Madhur Anand | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Education | Western University, (BSc, PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, educator |
| Employer | University of Guelph |
| Notable work | This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart |
| Awards | Governor General’s Literary Award |
| Website | Madhur Anand |
Madhur Anand is a Canadian poet and professor of ecology and environmental sciences. She was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario and lives in Guelph, Ontario.
Anand completed her PhD in theoretical ecology at Western University in 1997 and conducts research on ecological change and sustainability science. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Trieste, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Utrecht University and the University of New Mexico. [1] She has been a visiting professor at McGill University and Princeton University. [2] Her research topics include coupled human-environment systems and forest and forest-grassland mosaic ecosystems, with a particular focus on how sources of stress and disturbance, such as agriculture and climate change, affect these ecosystems across different spatial and temporal scales. She uses mathematical and simulation modelling, statistical tools, dendrochronology, and other observational methods. She is a full professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph, where she has led the Global Ecological Change and Sustainability lab as a researcher for over 25 years. She has co-authored over 190 peer-reviewed scientific publications. [3]
Anand has received numerous awards for her research, including two Canada Research Chairs (the Canada Research Chair in Global Ecological Change at the University of Guelph and the Canada Research Chair in Biocomplexity of the Environment at Laurentian University), the Ontario Premier's Research Excellence Award in Science and Technology, and the Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award from the Ontario Innovation Trust [1] . As an expert in her field, Anand has dedicated herself to advancing public awareness surrounding the critical issues of biodiversity decline and the climate crisis. Her contributions extend across various public talks, national and international print media, radio, and television interviews. She has been recognized by her communities with several career awards, including the YWCA Three Rivers Woman of Distinction [4] , Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce Female Professional of the Year [5] , City of Guelph Top 40 Under 40 [6] , the Western University Young Alumni Award of Merit [7] , and induction into the Thomas A. Blakelock Hall of Fame [8] .
Madhur Anand wrote her first poem in 1996 in the final year of writing her PhD thesis. [9] [10] A feature in Quill and Quire, wrote that Anand's "poetry is informed by her scientific knowledge". [11]
Her poetry then began to appear in literary magazines including the Literary Review of Canada, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Lemon Hound, The Rusty Toque, and The Walrus . Her work also appeared in the anthologies The Shape of Content: Creative Writing in Mathematics and Science [12] and How a Poem Moves. [13]
Her first collection of poems, A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2015 to national and international acclaim. It received a starred review in Publishers’ Weekly [14] and was nominated for a Trillium Book Award for Poetry in 2016. [15] This collection challenges the reader to re-think ecopoetry and includes numerous examples of found poems derived from her own scientific papers. The CBC named the book as one of ten all-time “trailblazing” Canadian poetry collections. [16] The New York Times also lauded Anand’s innovative approach to poetry in this work, highlighting her poem "The Strategy of the Majority," derived from her seminal work on human-environment systems, which was a catalyst for her more recent study, Prioritising COVID-19 vaccination in changing social and epidemiological landscapes , which used game theory to model vaccination prioritization strategies. [17]
Her second book of poetry Parasitic Oscillations was published by Penguin Random House to international acclaim and was the CBC Top Pick for Poetry in Spring 2022. [18] It was also chosen as a Globe and Mail Top 100 best books of 2022. [19]
Anand's debut creative non-fiction book This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart [20] won the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction at the 2020 Governor General's Awards. [21] The work exemplifies the sub-genre of creative non-fiction and describes intra- and inter-generational perspectives on topics ranging from the Indian Partition to life as a young scientist. The award jury noted how the memoir “blends science, personal narrative and fictional elements to push the non-fiction form into bold new territory”, [21] while filmmaker Deepa Mehta writes that “... the different perspectives are truly poetic and at times heartbreaking”. [20]
Anand began writing fiction in 2017, and her first submitted short story, "Hidden Fruit," won the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize. [22] Her more recent short story, “Insects Eat Birds”, was selected by Lisa Moore for the Best Canadian Stories anthology in 2024. [23] [24]
To Place a Rabbit, Anand’s debut novel, was published by Knopf Canada in 2025. [25] The novel was met with national praise; called "Borgesian" by The Globe and Mail in their 2025 Spring Books Preview, [26] “delightfully clever [and] artfully layered,” by CBC Books, [27] and described by the Seaboard Review of Books as “bracingly original”, praising Anand as “one of the more fearlessly adventurous writers working today.” [28]
Apart from her personal writing endeavours, Anand also commits herself to editorial activities and to mentoring students and new writers. She co-edited two volumes of poetry, Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry, [29] and Watch Your Head: Writers & Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis [30] and was the poetry editor for Canadian Notes and Queries from 2018 to 2022 [31] .
Madhur Anand's interdisciplinary work integrates environmental science, literature, and mathematics, providing insights into climate change, biodiversity, and human-environment interactions and offering innovative ways for both scientific communication and artistic imagination. [32] [33] She was director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation from 2015 to 2018, where she organized several interdisciplinary events such as Living on the Precipice: Interdisciplinary Conference on Resilience in Complex Natural and Human Systems and Poetry and Complexity, the latter featuring Nobel Laureate scientist and writer Roald Hoffman and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout. The event was covered in Rungh Magazine. [34] From 2019 to 2023, Anand was the inaugural director of the Guelph Institute for Environmental Research, which worked to tackle the world’s environmental problems through innovation and interdisciplinary collaborations between all seven colleges at the University of Guelph. [35] During this time, she established The Collaboratory, a group of scientists, artists and writers working together to face our ongoing environmental crises. [36] [37]
In an essay entitled "Angles Where the Grass Writing Goes On" published in The New Quarterly, issue 146, titled Falling in Love with Poetry, she wrote:
"To find one’sinner thoughts, hidden thoughts, planted, no, already lush and green, in another’s mind was mysterious and attractive. To be able to connect my personal experiences, and even unconscious memories, to remote biophysical phenomena foreshadowed my desire to know the world in more than one way." [38]
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