The Director

Benjamin Lefebvre is a full-time writer, editor, and researcher living in Waterloo, Ontario, as well as Visiting Scholar at the L.M. Montgomery Institute, University of Prince Edward Island from 2009 to 2011. He recently edited Montgomery’s rediscovered final book, The Blythes Are Quoted (Viking Canada, 2009), co-edited a restored edition of Montgomery’s First World War novel, Rilla of Ingleside (Viking Canada, 2010), co-edited Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables (University of Toronto Press, 2010), contributed the case study on Montgomery to the Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing project, and wrote the introduction to a new edition of Montgomery’s A Tangled Web (Dundurn Press, 2009). Web: http://roomofbensown.net/.

Advisory Board

Cecily Devereux is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Alberta, specializing in English-Canadian women’s literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is the editor of a scholarly edition of Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (2004) and the author of Growing a Race: Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism (2006).

Elizabeth R. Epperly’s most recent books are Through Lover’s Lane: L.M. Montgomery’s Photography and Visual Imagination (2007) and Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery (2008). For years a Professor of English at the University of Prince Edward Island, she was the founder and first chair of UPEI’s L.M. Montgomery Institute. Web: http://lmm.confederationcentre.com/.

Janice Fiamengo is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. She has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers, and is the author of The Woman’s Page: Journalism and Rhetoric in Early Canada (2008) and the editor of Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination (2007). Web: http://www.english.uottawa.ca/faculty/fiamengo.html.

Trinna S. Frever teaches English at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth, Florida. Her research focuses on intermedia theory, particularly the interconnections between orality, visuality, musicality, and print fiction. Stemming from her interest in North American women’s regionalist writing 1880-1940, she has presented and published numerous essays on L.M. Montgomery, most recently in Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne and Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict (2008). Web: http://www.palmbeachstate.edu/x461.xml?id=Frevert.

Irene Gammel is Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture and Professor of English at Ryerson University. She is editor of L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture (with Elizabeth Epperly, 1999), Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture (2002), and The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery (2005). Her most recent book is Looking for Anne: How Lucy Maud Montgomery Dreamed Up a Literary Classic (2008). Web: http://www.ryerson.ca/mlc/.

Carole Gerson is a professor in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. She has published extensively on Canadian literary history and early women writers and most recently co-edited volume 3 of History of the Book in Canada / Histoire du livre et de l’imprimé au Canada (2007).

Yuka Kajihara is Osborne Collection Assistant with the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books (Toronto Public Library) and a Research Associate at the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre (Ryerson University). She consults widely on issues relating to Montgomery and Japanese culture, and has a particular interest in LMM’s life in Ontario. Yuka is presently working on a chapter about Canadian scholarly perception of LMM. Web: http://yukazine.com/.

Jennifer Litster’s doctoral thesis (University of Edinburgh, 2001) examined “The Scottish Context of L.M. Montgomery.” She has written articles on Montgomery for the journal Canadian Children’s Literature / Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse and the volumes L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture (1999) and The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery (2005). In 2006 she taught a special English course on L.M. Montgomery at the University of Prince Edward Island with Elizabeth Waterston. Jenny currently works for the Institute of Education at the University of London, UK.

Laura Robinson is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. She has published articles on L.M. Montgomery in Canadian Literature, Children’s Voices in Atlantic Literature and Culture (1995), L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture (1999), Canadian Studies: An Introductory Reader (2004), Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict (2008), and 100 Years of Anne with an “e”: The Centennial Study of Anne of Green Gables (2009).

Kate Sutherland is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. She teaches and writes in the areas of tort law, feminist legal theory, law and sexuality, and law and literature. She is currently engaged in research on the various legal disputes in which L.M. Montgomery and her work became embroiled throughout her lifetime. She recently contributed a chapter to Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict (2008). Web: http://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty/Sutherland_Kate.html.

Hildi Froese Tiessen, an Associate Professor of English and Peace Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, has collaborated with Paul Tiessen on a number of articles on L.M. Montgomery’s relationship with Ephraim Weber and on several conference presentations, including one on Montgomery’s unpublished correspondence with George Boyd MacMillan. Their scholarly edition of letters After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941 was published in 2006. Web: http://grebel.uwaterloo.ca/contact/hildi.shtml.

Research Associates

Vanessa Brown received her B.A. (Hons.) in English from the University of Western Ontario and works as an antiquarian book cataloguer at Attic Books in London, Ontario. She recently won second prize in the Bibliographical Society of Canada’s National Book Collecting Contest for her extensive collection of first and rare editions related to L.M. Montgomery and her work. Her interest in L.M. Montgomery’s publishing history also involves conservation, preservation, and restoration.

Mary Beth Cavert, who holds a graduate degree in Educational Administration (University of Minnesota) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education (St. Olaf College, Minnesota), recently retired after thirty-four years of teaching in public schools in Edina, Minnesota. She has presented papers at conferences hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute and has contributed chapters to The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album (1999) and The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery (2005). With Carolyn Strom Collins, she writes for and co-edits The Shining Scroll, the newsletter of the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society.

Carolyn Strom Collins received a B.A. in French (Samford University) and an M.A. in Library Science (University of Minnesota). She is co-author, with Christina Wyss Eriksson, of The Anne of Green Gables Treasury (1991), The Anne of Green Gables Treasury of Days (1994), and The Anne of Green Gables Christmas Treasury (1997). She has also contributed chapters to The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album (1999) and to Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict (2008). In addition to founding the L.M. Montgomery Literary Society of Minnesota in 1991 and, with Mary Beth Cavert, co-editing its newsletter, The Shining Scroll, she is on staff at the L.M. Montgomery Heritage Museum in Park Corner, PEI.