Rhonda Collis was born in Oliver, British Columbia, Canada, or the sunny Okanagan. Her mother was an elementary teacher and her father an RCMP officer so the family moved every few years, from BC, to Saskatchewan, Alberta and finally, Ontario. Rhonda graduated with a degree in English Literature from the University of Western Ontario (currently Western University), in 1985. Subsequently, she worked jobs in office administration, magazine publishing, broadcasting, human resources, and technical writing.

It wasn’t until her two daughters started school that she pursued writing fiction and poetry seriously, returning to the University of Victoria to participate in undergrad writing workshops with renowned poetry instructors such as Carla Funk, Derk Wynand, Patrick Lane, and Lorna Crozier and fiction instructors, Lorna Jackson, Esi Edugyan, Sean Virgo and Bill Gaston, among others.

Before completing a second undergrad degree, she was accepted into UBC’s optional residency MFA program which granted the flexibility of completing a Master’s degree while still in her pajamas. At UBC she studied fiction with Catherine Bush and Lisa Moore, together with instructors of other genres. Later, as an alumni, she studied with Anosh Irani. She graduated from UBC in 2011, having completed a historical novel under the tutelage of Gail Anderson-Dargatz.

Soon after beginning her studies as a mature student, she began submitting short stories and poetry to literary journals and now has a substantial body of work that she is refining with an eye to publication. Her writing has won awards from the Vancouver Writer’s Festival, Room, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review and The New Quarterly magazines. Her fiction and poetry have also been published in On Spec, The Vancouver Review, Smartish Pace, Arc, Mslexia, Prairie Fire, Freefall, Comstock Review, Echolocation magazine and various anthologies in Canada and the UK.

She has taught creative writing at Camosun College in Victoria, BC, has served on the editorial board of Prism Magazine at UBC in Vancouver, and has taught adult ESL classes in Duncan, BC, Canada.

An urbanite by nature, she can be caught masquerading as a country gal on a glorious acre of land in the Cowichan Valley that she shares with her husband and two adult daughters (periodically), north of Victoria and south of Duncan on Vancouver Island.