Chris is currently OPEN to commissions for portraits and illustrations, and accepting freelance design, editing, and writing work. Get a hold of him HERE for rates or inquiries

Chris Bailey is a graphic designer, writer, and commercial fisherman from Prince Edward Island. He holds a MFA Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Chris’ writing has appeared in Grain, Brick, The Fiddlehead, Best Canadian Stories 2021, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, What Your Hands Have Done, is available from Nightwood Editions. His piece, Fisherman’s Repose, was a winner of the 2022 BMO 1stArt! Award. His second book, Forecast: Pretty Bleak is forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in 2025.

BMO 1stArt! Award Win

Chris is the PEI winner for the 2022 prize for his piece, Fisherman’s Repose
Fisherman’s Repose, 35″x43″ vector illustration on PVC
BMO 1stArt! Award Media
Links

Writing

book cover of What Your Hands Have Done showing broken lobster traps in a PEI field, everything tinted teal
What Your Hands Have Done

What Your Hands Have Done looks at how life spent in a close-knit fishing family in rural Prince Edward Island marks a person. The book is rooted in PEI but moves from there to Toronto where the malaise of life proves to be unbound to the sameness of small-town days spent hauling gear on the Atlantic or toiling in rust-red potato fields.

Bailey examines the world around him from the inside, observing the minute to account for the vast. These poems are laid bare and free of ornament, revealing the hard-won wisdom just below the surface.

Learn more about What Your Hands Have Done here.

water whitecapping against the stone breakwater of North Lake Harbour, eel grass in the foreground
“Nothing but Water”

“The boat hauler backs from the road down the few-hundred-foot-long lane to the boat south of the south building. As he does this, Dad sledgehammers the blocking propping up the bow. There’s a conversation Dad and the hauler have, though I can’t quite hear over the winch’s whine. What I hear is the boat hauler say, All the young fellas have around here is crushed dreams.”

Read the essay, as originally printed in Brick 102, here

“A Hard Year for Birds”

“She says, ‘My house has her dancing shoes on, and she’s doing the hoochie-coochie,’ and, ‘There’s streets missing, old houses gone. Where there was neighbourhoods, there’s devastation.’ “

Read the essay about the aftermath of hurricane Fiona, originally printed in Brick 111, here