About

Hello, my name is Ruth Panofsky. Welcome, and thank you for visiting.

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I am an award-winning poet, writer, and editor whose books reflect my wide-ranging interests. My book of poems, Laike and Nahum: A Poem in Two Voices, won the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award.

A two-volume edition of the collected poems of Miriam Waddington received multiple awards, including the Canadian Jewish Literary Award.

I am recognized as “Canada’s foremost Wiseman scholar” for my books on the novelist Adele Wiseman.

 

I have also written about publishing in Canada, with a focus on the women who have worked in the industry. My writing and research have been supported with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Bibliographical Society of Canada, and the Bibliographical Society of America.

 

In recognition of my creative and scholarly achievements, I received Ryerson University’s Sarwan Sahota Distinguished Scholar Award in 2016 and the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies’ Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award in 2017. In 2018,

I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

 

I was born and raised in Montreal and went on to study English at Carleton University and York University, where my love of Canadian literature was encouraged. Today, I live and write in Toronto. I am a professor of English at Ryerson University and teach courses on Canadian literature and culture, Canadian Jewish writing, and Holocaust literature.