Barbara Bruhin Kenney is an American-Canadian writer, journalist and educator. Her most recent work appears in Poetry Ireland Review, The Malahat Review, Lyric Magazine, and Feels Magazine. Kenney was a runner up in the 2023 Little Fires of Brigid Poetry Competition and published in Drawn to the Light Press. Her creative non-fiction piece, “A Cardinal Worry,” appears in the collection, Writing in the Time of Covid, Life Rattle Press, Toronto. Her early writing life was spent as a reporter at The Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, New York. She has worked as a drama teacher and a college writing instructor. In 2021, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia where she was a recipient of the Earle Birney Scholarship.
Kenney’s poetry has been inspired by participation in
The Inishlacken Project, an artists’ residency curated by Irish Artist, Rosie McGurran RUA on the now-abandoned island of Inishlacken and the birthplace of Kenney’s maternal grandmother. McGurran created a painting inspired by one of Kenney’s poems. The painting, Lost Things Found, was gifted to former Irish President, Mary McLeese, at the opening of the Gerard Dillon Gallery in Belfast.
The Inishlacken Project, an artists’ residency curated by Irish Artist, Rosie McGurran RUA on the now-abandoned island of Inishlacken and the birthplace of Kenney’s maternal grandmother. McGurran created a painting inspired by one of Kenney’s poems. The painting, Lost Things Found, was gifted to former Irish President, Mary McLeese, at the opening of the Gerard Dillon Gallery in Belfast.
Kenney’s writing often explores the experiences of the diaspora of island women, who traveled to North America in the Golden Age and brought with them a matrilineal line of poetry -- like a secret language of love and loss, collected and passed down through generations.
