Lauren Kalinowski

My passion is helping women unlock the stories buried in their bones—the ones we inherit from mothers who couldn't speak them, grandmothers who carried them in silence, and ancestors whose names we've forgotten but whose trauma lives in our bodies.

My writing began when my estranged mother died and left me with questions instead of answers. In that void, I discovered writing as a portal for processing intergenerational trauma, a way to speak with the dead and heal what was broken between us. As an MFA candidate at the University of King's College, my thesis The Matriarchs: Memory, Migration and the Stories Women Carry excavates 6 generations of my matriarchal line through memoir, while my forthcoming poetry collection Maiden to Mother traces the transformation of becoming.

My gift is holding space for women to write their truth—even the messy, complicated, unspeakable parts. I founded the Downtown Writer's Workshop in Edmonton as a free gathering place for stories, and I facilitate creative non-fiction workshops at the University of Alberta. My work appears in Existere, Cult Magazine, Circe, and local publications including The Tomato, Edify, and Culinaire. I co-edit Edmonton Scene.

What I know that every woman must know: Your story matters, even if—especially if—it's difficult. Writing is not just documentation; it's medicine. When we write our mothers' silences, our grandmothers' secrets, and our own unspoken truths, we break cycles. We reclaim our voices. We transform inherited pain into ancestral wisdom.

The page holds what our bodies cannot carry alone.