Sierra Skye Gemma (she/her) is an award-winning writer and journalist. Sierra currently lives on the ancestral Land of the Xwsepsum (Esquimalt) and Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees) peoples as a white settler on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. Sierra is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Best New Magazine Writer and a National Newspaper Award for Long Feature. Sierra has been listed in contests with House of Anansi Press, Creative Nonfiction Collective / Humber Literary Review, and Room and has won literary contests sponsored by The New Quarterly, wards, and Rhubarb.

Sierra’s nonfiction has been published in The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, The Vancouver Observer, Sad Mag, WestCoast Families, Plenitude, and elsewhere. Her work has been anthologized in the Best Canadian Essays 2013, Boobs: Women Explore What It Means to Have Breasts, and Rock is Not Dead: Short Fiction Inspired by Rock Music.

Sierra is devoted to making the Canadian literary landscape more progressive, inclusive, and welcoming. To this end, she spent four years as an Executive Editor of PRISM international; she worked and volunteered for over three years with Room magazine as a Creative Nonfiction Reader, Contest Reader, Contest Coordinator, and Growing Room Festival Moderator and Volunteer; and she served as the Mentorship Program Coordinator, Teaching Assistant Coordinator, and Student Representative to the Faculty Hiring Committee in the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of British Columbia.

Sierra has a BA in History and Sociology and an MFA in Creative Writing, both from the University of British Columbia. Her work is made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts. (Elle reconnaît le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.) Sierra is also immensely grateful for the financial assistance of the Access Copyright Foundation and the British Columbia Arts Council.

To contact Sierra, please use the contact form below.