Canadian children's author
Kari-Lynn Winters, née Moore (born 1969) is a Canadian children's author, playwright, drama educator, and literacy professor. She taught children's literacy, literature, dance and drama education at the University of British Columbia[1] from 2004 to 2009. In 2010, Winters became an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University (Ontario) and co-editor of Teaching and Learning.[2] She advanced to associate professor in 2014, and to full professor in 2021.[citation needed]
Early life and education
Winters was born in St. Thomas, Ontario. She holds a teaching degree from the University of Toronto, in regular and special education for children ages 3–13.[citation needed] She is also a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, where she earned a certificate in technical theatre.[3] Her master's thesis "Developing an Arts-Integrated Narrative Reading Comprehension Program for Less Proficient Grade 3 and 4 Students," on exploring the efficacy of using the arts to strengthen less proficient students' reading comprehension, was selected as best Master's Thesis in Literacy in Canada, 2005.[4] Winters completed her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2009 with a dissertation entitled "Authorship as Assemblage: Multimodal Literacies of Play, Literature, and Drama."[5] Her dramatic work included writing scripts for and performing with Vancouver's theatre-for-literacy troupes Carousel Theatre and Tickle Trunk Players.[6]
Career
Winters has published numerous children's books,[7] children's non-fiction articles, and academic articles, and has herself won multiple Excellence in Teaching awards[8] and won the St. Catharines Arts Awards 2016 "Emerging Artist Award" and the St. Catharines Arts Educator Award in 2020.[9][10]
Winters says she didn't always consider herself a writer; many of her elementary school years were spent either resisting composition or struggling to write.[11] Her current work explores how she came to appreciate storytelling and children's literature and eventually became a writer herself, and ways to effect a similar transformation in her students.[12] Winters has been featured in radio and newspaper interviews[13] and her academic work has been cited by other literacy researchers.[14][15][16]
From 2010 to 2012 Winters expanded her work to educational activism, from organizing an annual "Arts Matters" educational conference[17] to raising funds for girls' education in Africa. Proceeds from her book Gift Days are being used to support the charity Because I am a Girl, a movement to "unleash" the power of girls and women in the developing world through education and women's rights;[18] at its book launch in November 2012, enough money was raised to send 10 girls to school in Uganda for a year.[19] Her advocacy for arts research and arts-based practices continued throughout the Covid pandemic, including creating a play and film for "What’s Art Got to Do With It? The role of arts and culture in a community’s survival during a global pandemic."[20]
By 2020 she had twenty-nine books published or press.[21]
