Amy Lavender Harris teaches in the Department of Geography at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Amy is a contributing editor with Spacing Magazine, where she writes a regular column on Toronto literature. She has also contributed essays to Open Book: Toronto and Open Book Magazine, Reading Toronto, The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto (Coach House, 2006), GreenTOpia (with Peter Fruchter, Coach House, 2007), Canada: A Literary Tour (Library & Archives Canada, 2009), Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polities and Identity (2011), Plan Canada and the Ontario Planning Journal.
Amy speaks regularly to popular and scholarly audiences about Toronto literature and the imaginative qualities of cities. Recent and forthcoming appearances include Salon Voltaire (2006), the Goethe Institute (2006), Juice Dialogues/Think Tank at OCAD (2006), the Toronto Festival of Architecture & Design (May 2007), Walk21 (October 2007), Beyond Bureaucracy (November 2007), the Walk21 Toronto Community Conference (March 2008), Jane’s Walk (May 2008), the 4th annual Osgoode Constitutional Roundtable (March 2009), Doors Open Toronto (May 2009), Bookcamp Toronto (June 2009), the Professional Writers’ Association of Canada (June 2010), Brockton Writers’ Series (June 2011), the Glocal City in Canadian Literature conference (Salamanca, Spain, June 2011), the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (June 2011) and Classical Pursuits (July 2011). In the spring of 2011 the Toronto Public Library featured her ‘Imagined City’ series of talks; this series returned for a second session in the fall of 2011. 2012 engagements include travelling to Germany to speak at the Canadian Studies Association in German-speaking countries (GKS) conference in February.
She has also been a union leader and negotiator, an urban planner, a civilian instructor and a journalist.
Amy lives in the Toronto Junction area with her husband and daughter.
