Mary Johnson is a second-year PhD student in the Department of English at Queen's University. She is primarily interested in creative writing and children's literature, with a focus on ecofeminist approaches to Golden Age children's fiction.
Ecocriticism (particularly ecofeminism); climate and environmental humanities; genre fiction; food studies; girlhood and body image; animal studies; mental health; coming-of-age stories; Victorian and Edwardian literature; juvenilia.
Conferences
[Forthcoming] 2024: ACCUTE, McGill University, Quebec
Panel: "No One is Too Small to Make a Difference": Eco-Activism and Children's Media
Paper: Juvenile Perspectives: Barbara Newhall Follett’s Empathetic Environments
[Forthcoming] 2024: The Bronx Book Festival, New York
Panel: New Voices for New Beginnings: Debuting in Middle Grade
2024: International Young Scholars' Conference, University of Stettin (Virtual Conference)
Panel: Representations of Animal Bodies and the More-than-Human World
Paper: Unscientific Creatures: Becoming Girl, Becoming Animal in 19th and Early 20th Century Children’s Literature
2023: ACCUTE, York University, Ontario
Panel: When the Body Speaks: Expressions of Bodily Pain in Creative Writing
Paper: What Does It Mean For A Body To Be Wrong?: Dysmorphia and Healing in Children's Verse Novels
2021: Research Ethics Conference, University of Exeter (Virtual Conference)
Poster: I Dream Regardless: Ethics, Ambition, and Emergent Genres in Adolescent Fiction
2021: Kaleidoscope, University of Cambridge (Virtual Conference)
Theme: Responding to Ruptures: Speaking Back to Power
Poster: Darkly, Academia: Reclamations of Power in the Transgressive Spaces of Young Adult Literature
Academic Publications
[Forthcoming]: "All The Wild Was Ready To Make Friends: Ecofeminist Childhoods in Barbara Newhall Follett's The House Without Windows." Chapter in Women Who Write Animals: Female Literary Representations of the More-Than-Human World, edited by Lorraine Kerslake and Diana Villanueva. Brill Press.
Short Fiction/Poetry
2024: "heartwood genesis." Room Magazine. Issue 46.4. (Fever Dream)
2022: "Last House." FreeFall Magazine. vol. 32. no.1. (Environmental Special Issue)
Novels
[Forthcoming] 2025: The Ghosts of Bitterfly Bay, G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers/Penguin Random House
2024: The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, Razorbill/Penguin Random House
