Victoria Freeman is a Canadian author, theatre artist, educator, and public historian. She was born in Ottawa and attended the University of Toronto, where she received her PhD in History in 2010. Her first book, Distant Relations: How My Ancestors Colonized North America, was shortlisted for the 2000 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Her second book, A World Without Martha: A Memoir of Sisters, Disability, and Difference, about her experience as a sibling of a child institutionalized for having an intellectual disability, was released by UBC Press on October 1, 2019 and shortlisted for a 2019 Lamda Award for Bisexual Non-Fiction. She has co-written two plays, The Talking Treaties Spectacle, with Ange Loft of Jumblies Theatre, and Birds Make Me Think About Freedom, with L'Arche Toronto Sol Express; the latter won a Patron's Pick award at the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival. She co-wrote the filmscript for By These Presents: "Purchasing" Toronto, featured at the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art and screeened at the Glasgow Short Film Festival, the San Francisco American Indian Film Festival, and the Montreal First Peoples Festival. She is the co-author, with Ange Loft, Martha Stiegman, and Jill Carter of A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, launched at the 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art in May 2022 and now in its second edition. A new book, tentatively titled From the Carrying Place to Yonge Street: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers on the Toronto Periphery, 1787-1876, will be published by University of Calgary Press in 2025 or 2026.
Photo Credit:
Photo credit
Mark Fawcett
Victoria Freeman
BIO
Biography
ADDRESS
City: Toronto,
Province/Territory: Ontario
EMAIL
c/o TWUC
GENRE
Creative non-fiction
LANGUAGES
English
PUBLICATIONS
Publications
Title
A World without Martha: A Memoir of Sisters, Disability, and Difference
Publisher
UBC Press/ Purich Press
Year
2019
Title
A Treaty Guide for Torontonians
Publisher
Toronto Biennial of Art, Art Metropole, and Jumblies Press
Year
May 2022
Title
Distant Relations: How My Ancestors Colonized North America
Publisher
McClelland & Stewart
Year
2000; 2002
LINKS
PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSHOPS
EQUITY INITIATIVE
As part of the Union’s Equity Implementation Plan, we are committed to increasing awareness of authors who are Black, Indigenous, racialized, LGBTQI2S, or living with a disability. This author identifies as:
Members who identify as:
LGBTQI2S
Programs & Interests
Interested in participating Union’s Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program:
All members are eligible for the Union’s Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program. Are you interested in participating in this pro
Yes
Interested in participating in the Northern Ontario WITS program:
The Union’s Northern Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program funds in-person visits to northern Ontario schools when possible. Ar
Yes