Jeremy Hanson-Finger

B.A. Combined Honours English and Communication ’09, M.A. English ’10

After leaving Carleton University, Jeremy moved to Toronto, where he co-founded the literary magazine Dragnet, project-managed book production at Wiley, worked as a freelance editor, and oversaw the conversion of print books and magazines into e-books at Kobo. He was awarded a Toronto Arts Council grant for his unfinished short story manuscript, but then moved back to Ottawa in January 2016 to work as a technical writer at Shopify. He hopes Toronto doesn’t think he’s ungrateful. His first novel, a hard-boiled detective novel set in the Ottawa Civic Hospital, published with Invisible Publishing in spring 2017.

How has your Carleton English degree informed your professional and/or creative path?

Carleton English—in particular the master’s degree program—exposed me to transgressive authors like Celine and Bataille and theorists like Bakhtin and Kristeva, who directly influenced my own creative writing.

Why Carleton? What specific experiences or opportunities did you benefit from while studying English at Carleton?

I originally came to Carleton for journalism, as it was one of only a couple options for an undergraduate degree in Journalism. But after first year, I changed my major to English and Communications after realizing that what I wanted from university was learning what to write about, not learning to write in one specific way. I benefited most from a graduate class on the literary theory of transgression with Brian Johnson, and from his mentorship as my M.A. thesis supervisor.