Kelly Norah Drukker

Dr. Kelly Norah Drukker is a writer, oral historian, and educator who holds a doctorate in interdisciplinary Humanities and a master’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University. Her research-creation dissertation, “Naming the Traces: (Re)Constructing an Irish-Canadian Family Narrative of Emigration, Place-Making, and Return” (Dr. Barbara Lorenzkowski), was the co-recipient of the COHDS Annual Award of Distinction in Oral History, and garnered a nomination for the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal (2025).

Kelly is the author of Small Fires, a poetry collection published by McGill-Queen’s University Press that was awarded the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Concordia University First Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Grand prix du livre de Montréal (2016). Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in journals in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. Petits feux, the French-language translation of Small Fires by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné, was published by Le lézard amoureux in 2018.

Working at the intersection of creative writing, oral history, Irish studies, cultural geography, and memory studies, Dr. Drukker has presented her research-creation projects at Concordia University, the University of Galway, Rutgers University, the University of Ulster, the University of Jyväskylä, and Sydney Catholic University, among others. She has been a featured author and performer at venues such as the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, the Festival international de la poésie de Trois-Rivieres, Sappho Poetry Night (Australia) and Northwest Words (Ireland). Kelly’s research has been the recipient of a Faculty of Arts and Science Graduate Fellowship, a Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship, a United Irish Societies of Montreal Scholarship, a School of Canadian Irish Studies Bursary, and a Fr. Thomas Daniel McEntee Graduate Scholarship. She continues to live, work, and write in Montreal.