Whitney French (she/her) is a writer, multidisciplinary artist, and publisher. Her writing has appeared in ARC Poetry, GEIST, the Puritan Magazine, WATER Magazine, CBC Books, and Quill and Quire. As a Hurston Wright Foundation and Watering Hole fellow, Whitney French is a self-described Black futurist, who explores memory, loss, technology, and nature in her works. Language is her favourite collaborator. 

She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (University of Regina, 2019) the winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing 2020. She also is the editor of Griot: Six Writers Sojourn into the Dark (Penguin Random House, 2022) Canada presented by Nia Centre for the Arts.

Whitney French is also a certified arts educator who has executed over 500 workshops in schools, community centres, prisons, group-homes and First Nations reserves. She has taught creative writing at Toronto Metropolitan University as a creative writing instructor and guest lectured at Humber College for the Business of Publishing course.

Whitney has lectured and presented in spaces such as Spellman College, Festival of Literary Diversity, Wayne State University, SOHO House, Aga Khan Museum, and Howard University. Having worked as both a developmental and acquisitions editor, French is now the co-founder and publisher of  Hush Harbour, the only Black queer feminist press in Canada. Currently, she lives in Toronto.

But if you really want to know what Whitney is like…

She loves growing and farming

She ties her shoes sitting down, always

She talks smack on the basketball courts but she’s really no good

She has an irrational fear of metal jewelry touching her skin (recovering from the fear!)

She hates chocolate

She taught herself how to play the guitar

She writes in trees often