Lydia Forssander-Song, MA

Sessional Assistant Professor of English; First Year English Coordinator

Lydia Forssander-Song received her First Class Honours English degree from the University of British Columbia in 1995 and completed her M.A. in English at the University of Toronto in 1997. She has been teaching at TWU since 1998. Her research interests are in postcolonial literatures, and she has presented papers at conferences in Sweden and Canada. She has published a number of short articles on postcolonial authors, a book chapter on Salman Rushdie, and a series of reviews in the Canadian Book Review Annual as well as Canadian Literature.

  • M.A. English (University of Toronto)
  • B.A. English, First Class Honours (University of British Columbia)

Expertise

  • Postcolonial literatures
  • First-year English

Awards & Honors

University of British Columbia Scholarship

Dean’s Honour List 1992 and 1994

Recent Publications

Salem Press (EBSCO Publishing) (2007 – 2013):

Chapter entitled “Rushdie as artist, migrant, and humanist in Imaginary Homelands and Step Across This Line” in Critical Insights: Salman Rushdie (2013)

Article entitled “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” in Survey of Short Fiction (Fourth Edition) (2012)

Article entitled “Agha Shahid Ali” in Critical Survey of Poetry (Third Revised Edition) (2011)

Article entitled “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje in Masterplots (Third Revised Edition) (2010)

Article entitled “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie in Masterplots (Third Revised Edition) (2010)

Article entitled “Shirley Geok-lin Lim” in Encyclopedia of American Immigration (2010)

Article entitled “Michael Ondaatje” in Great Lives from History: The 20th Century (2008)

Canadian Literature Reviews

“The Numbers Tell a Story”: Derek Mascarenhas’ Coconut Dreams and Bindu Suresh’s 26 Knots (2020)

“Strange Encounters”: Barry Freeman’s Staging Strangers: Theatre and Global Ethics and Ven Begamudré’s Extended Families: A Memoir of India (Winter 2018)

“Narratives and Ethics”: Deborah Bowen’s Stories of the Middle Space: Reading the Ethics of Postmodern Realisms (Winter 2010)

CBRA (Canadian Book Review Annual) Reviews (2003 – 2008):

CBRA 2003:     Maggie Helwig’s One Building in the Earth

                        Amanda Marchand’s Without Cease the Earth Faintly Trembles

CBRA 2004:     Peter Culley’s Hammertown

                        Jacqueline Baldwin’s A Northern Woman

                        Keith Garebian’s Reservoir of Ancestors

                        Heather Haley’s Sideways

                        Laura Moss’ Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature

CBRA 2005:     Tanis MacDonald’s Fortune

                         Sina Queyras’ Teethmarks

                         K. I. Press’ spine

                        Genevieve Lehr’s The Sorrowing House

CBRA 2006:     Oana Avasilichioaei’s Abandon

                        Amanda Lamarche’s The Clichéist

                        Elizabeth Bachinsky’s Home of Sudden Service

                        Douglas Barbour and Sheila E. Murphy’s Continuations

                        Dionne Brand’s Inventory

CBRA Online:   Roger Nash’s Something blue and flying upwards (2007)

Lorna Crozier’s The Blue Hour of the Day

W.H. New’s Along a Snake Fence Riding

Susan McCaslin’s Lifting the Stone (2008)

Conferences

Conference presenter on “Incarnational storytelling in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi” in May 2007 at the annual Conference on Christianity and Literature hosted by Trinity Western University, Langley, B.C., Canada

Panel chair of the session “Trauma and Transcendence in the Twentieth Century North American Novel” in May 2007 at the annual Conference on Christianity and Literature hosted by Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C., Canada

Conference presenter on “Storytelling and Faith: Religious exercise from a pluralistic viewpoint in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi” in October 2004 at the biennial International Society for Religion, Literature, and Culture conference hosted by the University of Uppsala, Sweden

Conference presenter on “Postmodern faith and fiction in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi” in May 2004 before the Christianity and Literature Study Group at the annual ACCUTE conference hosted by the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

Editing

Editor of Karl Petersen’s children’s novel The Kingdom of What-Is (Wipf and Stock, 2017)

Editor of Karl Petersen’s memoir Reformed: Confessions of a Preacher’s Kid (Wipf and Stock, 2019)

Affiliations & Memberships

  • ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College & University Teachers of English)
  • Christianity and Literature Study Group
  • International Society for Religion, Literature, and Culture

  • WRTG 100, ENGL 102, ENGL 103, ENGL 104, ENGL 290 (Introduction to World Literatures in English, Postcolonial Women’s Novels, Migrant Literatures)
  • ENGL 390 (Michael Ondaatje)
  • ENGL 400 (Booker prize-winning novels)
  • ENGL 482/583 (Contemporary World Literatures in English)
  • ENGL 590 (Salman Rushdie)
  • ENGL 607 (South Asian Diasporic Fiction, Postcolonial Islamic Influenced Literature, Islamic Representations of Women in Literature)