Conyer Clayton is a writer and editor from Louisville, Kentucky currently living in Ottawa, whose award-winning, multi-genre work often explores grief, disability, and gender-based violence through a surrealist lens. They are the author two full-length poetry collections: But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. (Winner of The Archibald Lampman Award, and Finalist for the Pat Lowther, Raymond Souster, and ReLit Awards, A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press) and We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Winner of the 2021 Ottawa Book Award, Guernica Editions). They are a Senior Editor at Augur Society and a member of VII (an Ottawa-based poetry collective).
Conyer's latest chapbook, Kneeling in Our Name, is out with Gap Riot Press, and will be a part of their forthcoming 2026 full-length collection of poetry with Buckrider Books (Wolsak and Wynn).
Their fiction, poetry, and nonfiction has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2023, The Ex-Puritan, This Magazine, Room Magazine, filling station, Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, Plenitude, CV2, The Capilano Review, and others.
Conyer is currently working on a novel with the support of Tin House, Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and The City of Ottawa.
Conyer offers freelance editorial and consultation services—reach out if you'd like to work with them on your manuscript, a grant consultation, or otherwise.
