Dr. Kayt Lackie (pen name Kayt Burgess) was born in Manitouwadge, Ontario and grew up in Elliot Lake. She studied classical music at the University of Western Ontario, publishing at Humber College, and creative writing at the University of Auckland and Bath Spa University. Her novel Heidegger Stairwell was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in September 2012. It won the infamous International 3 Day Novel Contest and was a finalist for the 2013 ReLit Award for Fiction. The short film adaptation “We Forgot to Break Up” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017. The feature film premiered in March 2024 at BFI Flare festival.
Kayt was a staff scriptwriter on the best-selling augmented reality app Zombies, Run!. She has published short stories, poems, plays and musicals, and produces work in experimental digital storytelling. Her novel "Connection at Newcombe" has been recently picked up by Latitude 46 Press and is due out Fall 2020. She received her Ph.D. from Bath Spa University . Kayt researches multimodality, transmediality, extended reality and digital storytelling through poststructuralist and narratological lenses.