Jael Ealey Richardson

Emerging Voice 2008

Jael Ealey Richardson writes history—the kind that’s mostly true because it’s based on memories, which are rich and colourful and divine and personal and inherently faulty. Her writing career began in theatrical spaces at the University of Guelph where she wrote her first play my upside down black face, an exploration of Canadian blackness. Excerpts of the play are published in the notable anthology T-Dot Griots: An Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers. In addition to a degree, in 2010, Richardson graduated from the MFA program at the University of Guelph with a draft of her first nonfiction manuscript. The Stone Thrower is a memoir about identity, lost history, and the journey that brought her American father to Canada during one of the most turbulent times in America. Portions of an early draft of the memoir were published in The Fieldstone Review. That’s herstory ... or at least part.