Alison Watt is a painter who works and teaches out of her studio on Protection Island, near Nanaimo. After completing a biology degree at Simon Fraser University, Alison Watt went on to study botany at the University of British Columbia. She has worked as a seabird researcher and as a naturalist in parks across BC. Her non-fiction has appeared in Canadian Wildlife Magazine; her poetry has appeared in many journals including Event, Room of One's Own and Vintage, the League of Canadian Poets annual anthology.

Her poetry collection Circadia (2005) followed The Last Island: A Naturalist's Sojourn on Triangle Island (2002). "The Last Island, a Naturalist’s Sojourn on Triangle Island, is a memoir of working as a seabird biologist and an elegy to one of the most wild and beautiful places on the BC coast. In my book of poetry, Circadia, scenes of ordinary life unfold in a backdrop of light cycles, tides, and weather. Some poems are set in a tropical research station and explore taxonomy and diversity. In others, I try to move past nature as a backdrop to delve more deeply into its inner, often invisible workings (photosynthesis, pollination…) to release them from the language of science."

Her first novel is Dazzle Patterns (Freehand Books 2017) which marks the centenary of the Halifax Explosion of 1917, at subject that also commenced the novel writing career of Hugh MacLennan with Barometer Rising.

"I am a painter who writes; I am a writer who paints," she says. "I am never sure exactly which comes first... Originally a biologist, I have worked on seabird colonies, in the Amazon, and in a botanical garden. I have led ecotours in Honduras, the Galapagos, and (under sail), in the Pacific Northwest in the Gulf Islands, the Great Bear Rainforest, Haida Gwaii, and Alaska. I have traveled extensively by land and sea. In 2008/2009 my husband and I sailed our boat to French Polynesia."

BOOKS:

The Last Island – a Naturalist’s Sojourn on Triangle Island. 2002. Harbour Press, Madeira Park.

Poetry: Circadia. 2005. Pedlar Press, Toronto.

Dazzle Patterns (Freehand Books 2017) $21.95 9781-988298-18-4

Review of the author's work by BC Studies:
The Last Island: A Naturalist's Sojourn on Triangle Island

[BCBW 2017]