Photo by Sarah Tanase
Kanika Lawton is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and film scholar originally from Vancouver, British Columbia.
She holds a Bachelor's of Arts in Psychology with a Minor in Film Studies from the University of British Columbia and a Master's of Arts from the University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute. She has presented her research on film and media studies across Canada and the United States, most notably at Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA)'s annual conference, the University of Toronto, Columbia University, Spiral Film and Philosophy Conference, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California. She has two scholarly articles on utopian (re)imagining in Dirty Computer (2018) and bodily autonomy and race in Ghost and the Shell (2017) forthcoming in Spectator and Media-N, Journal of the New Media Caucus, respectively. She has also served as an editor with the UBC Undergraduate Film Student Association and The Neutral: The University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Journal.
Kanika is the Founding Editor-In-Chief of L'Éphémère Review, Staff Director of Sundress Publications, and a poetry reader for Cotton Xenomorph. She has received fellowships from Pink Door and BOAAT Writer's Retreat and have been published in Ricepaper Magazine, Vagabond City Literary Journal, Longleaf Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Parentheses Journal, among others. A four-time Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of the micro-chapbooks Wildfire Heart (The Poetry Annals, 2018), Loneliness, and Other Ways to Split a Body (Ghost City Press, 2018), Monster (Girl) Theory (post ghost press, 2019), and Theories on Wreckage (Ghost City Press, 2020).
She holds a Bachelor's of Arts in Psychology with a Minor in Film Studies from the University of British Columbia and a Master's of Arts from the University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute. She has presented her research on film and media studies across Canada and the United States, most notably at Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA)'s annual conference, the University of Toronto, Columbia University, Spiral Film and Philosophy Conference, Northwestern University, and the University of Southern California. She has two scholarly articles on utopian (re)imagining in Dirty Computer (2018) and bodily autonomy and race in Ghost and the Shell (2017) forthcoming in Spectator and Media-N, Journal of the New Media Caucus, respectively. She has also served as an editor with the UBC Undergraduate Film Student Association and The Neutral: The University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Journal.
Kanika is the Founding Editor-In-Chief of L'Éphémère Review, Staff Director of Sundress Publications, and a poetry reader for Cotton Xenomorph. She has received fellowships from Pink Door and BOAAT Writer's Retreat and have been published in Ricepaper Magazine, Vagabond City Literary Journal, Longleaf Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Parentheses Journal, among others. A four-time Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of the micro-chapbooks Wildfire Heart (The Poetry Annals, 2018), Loneliness, and Other Ways to Split a Body (Ghost City Press, 2018), Monster (Girl) Theory (post ghost press, 2019), and Theories on Wreckage (Ghost City Press, 2020).
