On May 12, 2020, Christine Lowther was appointed the 2020-2022 Tofino Poet Laureate. Christine Lowther is an accomplished writer who has lived in the Tofino area for about 28 years. In her application she shared that “[she] came here specifically to join the logging blockades, … [and] was swiftly introduced to some of this place’s most controversial issues and values.” She “saw right away that Tofino was not only one community. It was and is made up of locals/ old timers, settlers’ descendants, loggers, fish farmers, oyster farmers, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, visitors, surfers, and three or four Indigenous Nations.”
A member of the Federation of British Columbia Writers, Christine Lowther is the author of Born Out of This, a memoir that was shortlisted for a BC Book Prize. Her poetry books are Half-Blood Poems, My Nature, and New Power. She is co-editor of Writing the West Coast: In Love with Place and Living Artfully: Reflections from the Far West Coast. Her work has appeared in Rising Tides, Refugium, Sweet Water, Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia, Canada’s Raincoast at Risk, The Malahat Review, the Goose and others.
Chris enjoyed a 3-month author residency at Historic Joy Kogawa House. She gratefully received the inaugural Rainy Coast Arts Award for Significant Accomplishment.