MARGARET CHRISTAKOS grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, where winter was winter and summer was a fresh water lake called Ramsey. In 1962 she started breathing, and has done a good job of it ever since. She began writing poetry in high school, and was significantly influenced by serial sitcom tv and the popular music of the day, especially Kate Bush, quickly followed by the writings of Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, Nicole Brossard, Marguerite Duras, Daphne Marlatt, Kathy Acker, and many others.

In 1980, Margaret went to York University (Toronto) to study Visual Arts and encountered the Creative Writing program there, in which luminous mentors including bpNichol and Don Coles introduced her both to poetry's aural vitality and its succinct yet ongoing measures of the narrative of consciousness. She was aroused by exposure to time-based video and performance art of the day to understand writing as one of the conceptual art forms in which the material of language must be allowed first and foremost to be the subject of experimentation.

Margaret's first collection of poetry was published with Coach House Press in 1989; she has gone on to publish five more poetry books and a novel, called Charisma, which was shortlisted for Ontario's Trillium Book Award in 2001. Her books of poetry each voyage into distinct formal and thematic territory, whether it be an interest in autobiography removed to the third person, in the domestic labour of raising children (she has three, two of whom are twins), in deeply examining sexuality and relationship, or in formal explorations with found material, collage, procedures of constraint, and generating one poem from the body of another. Margaret's work focuses on the act of writing as a metaphor for and an invitation to consciousness and presence.

From 1991 to 1997, Margaret taught Creative Writing at the Ontario College of Art and Design, working across genres, always encouraging students to find their own path into what a piece of writing could become. In 2004-2005, she had a fulltime residency at the University of Windsor, and gave seminars and engaged in one-on-one manuscript consultation with undergraduate and graduate writing students.

From her first job as a Dairy Queen queen, Margaret has worked for many years as an editor, production coordinator and events producer in the literary community in Toronto. She was coordinator of a pilot program in support of persecuted international writers living in exile in Canada, for PEN Canada, and created many public gatherings to draw attention to these refugee and immigrant writers' needs, and to provide them with opportunities to share their work. She has been a key member of several vibrant writing/publishing collectives, including Fuse (1988-1990), Fireweed (1991-1994),and MIX: the magazine of artist-run culture (1995-1997). In 2001 and 2002, she created the repeat benefit event Poetry College for the League of Canadian Poets.

Margaret's most recent books from Coach House are Excessive Love Prostheses (winner of the ReLit Award for Poetry) and Sooner. Currently engaged in completing new manuscripts of fiction and poetry while actively participating in the Toronto cultural community, she is delighted to be working with students through WiER.

Listen to her Wired Writers Podcast!