Priscila Uppal

Background

Ethnicity: Uppal's mother was Brazilian and father was of South Asian origin.

Priscila Uppal was born on October 30, 1974, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Education

Priscila Uppal graduated from Hillcrest High School in 1993. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from York University in 1997. Then she obtained a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Toronto in 1998 and returned to York University to earn a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2004.

Career

Priscila Uppal was a poet and novelist as well as an educator whose creative and academic interests included the tensions and dynamics between women, the nature of human violence, sexuality, multicultural clashes, revisionist myth-making, illness, mourning rituals and the expression of grief, the world of readers and the dangers and benefits of reading and the imagination, as well as the nature of the artistic process, among other things.

She is the author of books of poetry, including Ontological Necessities, Successful Tragedies, How to Draw Blood From a Stone, and novels including The Divine Economy of Salvation which is a look at female violence and the nature of family, faith, friendship, and repentance. Uppal was the author of a critical study on elegies, We Are What We Mourn. She also edited several anthologies and essay collections, including The Exile Book of Canadian Sports Stories, The Exile Book of Poetry in Translation: Twenty Canadian Poets Take On the World, Barry Callaghan: Essays on his Works, Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets, and Uncommon Ground: A Celebration of Matt Cohen.

In 2013, Uppal published the remarkable memoir Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, which chronicled her emotional reunion with her mother Theresa, who had abandoned her young children and disabled husband. In 2017 she was the author of the play What Linda Said. Through the lens of her real-life experience with cancer and losing close friends to cancer, it presents a magical and uplifting theatrical dialogue between two old friends. Based on her friendship with Linda Griffiths, the late celebrated Canadian actress, Uppal offers up a bitingly funny, poetic, and personal look at coping with cancer.

Uppal frequently gave guest lectures, talks, and workshops, in academic and non-academic circles about writing, reading, literacy, ethnicity, revisionism, genres, pedagogy, among many other topics, in Canada and the United States, and beyond. She appeared on numerous TV and radio programs and panels and was reviewed and/or profiled in national and international papers.

As a professor at York University, Uppal's teaching and research interests include English poetry, European poetry, Canadian literature, world literature, reading culture and representations of readers in art, revisionist mythmaking, adaptation, the artistic process, medical humanities, sports literature, mourning and grief, and creative writing in all its forms.

In addition to her main activities, she was appointed poet-in-residence for Canadian Athletes Now at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, served as the first poet-in-residence for the Rogers Cup Tennis Tournament in 2011, and acted as the poet-in-residence at the Vancouver Olympics and Paralympics in 2010.

At the time of her death, she was working on two books: a collection of poetry titled On Second Thought: Collected Poems as well as Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology.

Achievements

• Priscila Uppal is remembered as one of the most gifted and engaging young poets writing in English in Canada. Her works were published internationally and translated into Croatian, Dutch, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, and Latvian. For her remarkable contribution to Canadian art, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
  
  Uppal's work was presented for various awards. Her works were shortlisted for Griffin Poetry Prize, Governor General's Literary Award, Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and ReLit Award. Uppal was also named "Canada's coolest poet" by Time Out London. In her honor, Priscila Uppal Prize was established.

Works

More photos

• book

  • We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy

    (Why are so many contemporary poets writing elegies? Given...)

    2008
  • Live Coverage

    (Taking the form of a news report, complete with news craw...)

    2003
  • Winter Sport: Poems

    (Have you ever wondered what a luge poem or snowboarding p...)

    2010
  • The Exile Book of Poetry in Translation: 20 Canadian Poets Take On the World

    (A groundbreaking multilingual collection promoting a glob...)

    2009
  • Successful Tragedies: Poems 1998-2010

    (Successful Tragedies includes work from six books publish...)

    2010
  • Cover Before Striking

    (The characters in Cover Before Striking - ranging from py...)

    2004
  • Ontological Necessities

    (Written with the verve of the uninhibited artist but with...)

    2006
  • Pretending to Die

    (Continuing the author's exploration of myth and mourning,...)

    2001
  • Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother

    (Projection is the story of this mother-daughter meeting i...)

    2013
  • Confessions of a Fertility Expert

    (This compelling collection of poems deconstructs ordinary...)

    1999
  • The Divine Economy of Salvation

    (Angela receives an anonymous package containing an ornate...)

    2002
  • Traumatology

    (In exploring the topic of health, this collection of poet...)

    2010
  • The Exile Book of Canadian Sports Stories

    (An impressive assemblage of Canada's best literary voices...)

    2009
  • Sabotage

    (Sabotage is a collection of poems exploring private and p...)

    2015
  • 6 Essential Questions

    (Imaginations run wild in this strangely beautiful and fun...)

    2015
  • How to Draw Blood from a Stone

    (Weaving deftly through life, love, and power, Priscila Up...)

    1998
  • To Whom It May Concern

    (Hardev Dange is suffering through a tumultuous year. He's...)

    2009
  • Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology

    (We all know someone. Or maybe that someone happens to be ...)

    2018
  • Barry Callaghan: Essays on his Works 2007

Views

Priscila Uppal's favorite place to write was the beach in Barbados.

Quotations: "The power of poetry is difficult to measure or quantify and yet you know its power when you witness its effects."

"Poetry first triggers something inside of you, then expands to fill your whole being, and then facilitates a palpable release of emotion."

"I think a very undervalued and powerful tool is the imagination. When you're facing something like cancer, many people like me feel disconnected and alienated from themselves - from their bodies, from their coworkers, from their loved ones, from the world."

"The imagination is actually a way to repair and reconnect and heal those connections to yourself and other people."

Membership

Uppal was a member of the board of directors of the Toronto Arts Council.

Personality

Priscila liked Will Ferrell's movies.

She was good at sports.

An assortment of beautiful headgear for all occasions filled half her room-sized closet and her fabulous vintage dresses - the other half. Her favorite footwear was running shoes often worn with one of her glamorous dresses.

Physical Characteristics: Uppal's cause of death was synovial sarcoma.

Quotes from others about the person

• "In all the years I've known her, Priscila Uppal approached every project with enthusiasm and every person with generosity. She seemed utterly immune to cynicism, which is so rare, and I think that's what made her such a great teacher and friend and mentor to so many." - Paul Vermeersch
  
  "She was a person who had such great focus, even amongst all this chaos with her health." - Meaghan Strimas
  
  "She loved listening to a good story (she was a fabulous listener in general), and if she was especially outraged by someone’s bad behavior, she would shout, "Noooooooooooo!" - Meaghan Strimas
  
  "Pris was enthusiastic about everything in life, and when I was with her, I felt so heard and understood. She gave the best advice, and she saw the humor in even the darkest moments." - Meaghan Strimas
  
  "Her interest in other people's process and work was genuine and her drive to create was contagious." - Meaghan Strimas
  
  "I deeply admired her openness and kindness to others in the business." - John Degen
  
  "She was such an inspiration. She published beautiful work in every genre, and she brought amazing writers into our classroom. She was so generous and kind." - Danila Botha
  
  "Life was Priscila's greatest love, and she taught the rest of us how to embrace it."

Interests

• theatre, karaoke

• Music & Bands

  U2

Connections

Priscila Uppal was married to Christopher Doda.

husband:

Christopher Doda

Christopher Doda is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and critic known for his two collections of poetry, Among Ruins and Aesthetics Lesson. He is an editor with Exile Editions and Exile: The Literary Quarterly, as well as being the book review editor for Studio, an online poetry journal.