Rachel Rose


Rachel Rose is a Canadian/American poet, essayist and short story writer. She has published three collections of poetry, Giving My Body to Science, Notes on Arrival and Departure, and Song and Spectacle. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States.
In 2011, Rose and composer Leslie Uyeda were commissioned by the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver to write the libretto for Canada's first lesbian opera, When The Sun Comes Out, which premiered in August 2013 in Vancouver and in Toronto in June 2014.
Rose was Vancouver's Poet Laureate from 2014 to 2017.
Rose's short story collection The Octopus has Three Hearts was nominated for the 2021 Giller Prize.

Personal life

Rose grew up on Hornby Island, Vancouver, Anacortes and Seattle. In the mid-1990s, she lived and worked in Japan for a year. She has worked as a medical secretary, ESL teacher, and as the poetry mentor in the Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University. In 2015 she was a resident in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

Poetry