Creativity Challenge: 20 Author Portraits

Originally posted on Instagram, 20 authors were illustrated using reference photos and Adobe Illustrator. On the posts, a quote from their writing was used as a description. Four featured authors are below.


portrait of Canadian poet, Lorna Crozier
Lorna Crozier is a Canadian poet who holds the Head Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria. She has authored fifteen books and was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2011.

Lorna Crozier

“You see redemption in the ragged
footfalls of the rain. Like St. Teresa of Avila
you see the lord in pots and pans
and forget the good they do as simply
pots and pans in someone’s kitchen.
Sometimes a starry, starry night is just
a night with stars.”

– Excerpted from the poem “Van Gogh Went Out to Paint the Stars”, from the collection The Wrong Cat (McClelland & Stewart, 2015)


portrait of Canadian author, Richard Lemm
Richard Lemm is an author and professor based in Prince Edward Island. He was born in Seattle, immigrated to Canada in 1967, and moved to Atlantic Canada in 1979. He is the author of ten books, including his latest, a memoir titled Imagined Truths: Myths from a Draft-Dodging Poet (Tidewater Press, 2021).

Richard Lemm

“Each day was all we knew
of the future, and when the light
reappeared, bright in floating crystals
those of us who could rejoiced.”

– Excerpted from the poem “Pleistocene”, from the collection Jeopardy (Acorn Press, 2018)


portrait of Canadian author Michael Winter
Michael Winter is a Canadian writer, the author of five novels and three collections of short stories. He has won the Writers’ Trust Notable Author Award, and his work has been longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He divides his time between Toronto and St. John’s.

Michael Winter

“When I think of God I think of a voice in my chest I tell promises to. I will not lie. I will give away a hundred dollars this month. I will not read Lydia’s journal. I will praise others and not myself. I will steal only from corporations. I will not fool myself about the truth of my actions.”

– Excerpted from the novel This All Happened (House of Anansi Press, 2001)


portrait of Canadian author Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand: Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, and documentarian. She was Toronto’s third Poet Laureate from September 2009 to November 2012. She was admitted to the Order of Canada in 2017 and has won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Trillium Prize for Literature, the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry, the Harbourfront Writers’ Prize, and the Toronto Book Award.

Dionne Brand

“People stand or sit with the thin magnetic film of their life wrapped around them. They think they’re safe, but they know they’re not. Any minute you can crash into someone else’s life, and if you’re lucky, it’s good, it’s like walking on light.”

– Excerpted from the novel What We All Long For (Griffin, 2008)