Jennifer Rouse Barbeau is a writer and illustrator.
Dying Hour (Fluid Grouse Enterprises, 2019), as a finalist in the 2020 Whistler Independent Book Awards for fiction, was celebrated as one of the three best independent Canadian works of fiction in 2020. This novella is part radio play, part theatre script, part prose and was inspired by a novel marathon competition in 2009.
Her first novel, Swampy Jo (Scrivener Press, 2010), was inspired by graffiti on the rocks and retaining walls of Bell Park in her birthplace of Sudbury, Ontario.
Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Bluffs: Northeastern Ontario Stories from the Edge (Scrivener Press, 2006) and Sulphur: Laurentian University's Literary Journal (The English Arts Society and Lambda, 2013), in northern Ontario newspapers, and in Canadian Living and Reader's Digest magazines.
Her illustrations appear on the cover and in the first edition print version of her novel Swampy Jo (Scrivener Press, 2010), in La Laineuse by Rachel Desaulniers (Centre FORA, 2006), in Come on Over! Northeastern Ontario A to Z (Scrivener Press, 2011), and on the covers of books by Barry Grills: Roadkill (Fluid Grouse, 2018); I And You, And Me And Her (Fluid Grouse, 2018); Oblivion (Fluid Grouse, 2018); Too Late The Hunter (Fluid Grouse, 2019); Cock-Eyed Voice: Stories (Fluid Grouse, 2020), and The Last Light Spoken (Fluid Grouse, 2022). She was privately-commissioned to create an illustrated book, Do You Remember? (2015), for a unique marriage proposal.
A full-time professor at Canadore College in North Bay, Ontario, she currently teaches English communications and creative writing courses and taught Advertising & Marketing Communications from 2006 to 2019. She has a Master of Education degree from the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) and a 4-year fellowship degree in illustration and advertising with a special interest in creative writing from the Ontario College of Art (OCADU) in Toronto, Ontario.
Jennifer resides in northern Ontario with her husband, author Barry Grills.
