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Biography

My name is April McInnes, and I am a settler PhD student of Indigenous literary studies in the Department of English at Queen’s University on Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory. I hold BAH, BEd, and MA degrees from Queen's, and I am a certified teacher with the Ontario College of Teachers. My research investigates decolonial approaches to Indigenous literatures and their implications and applications in secondary-level classrooms in the public education system.

Research Interests

Indigenous literatures; Indigenous coming-of-age narratives; decolonization; Indigenous education; pedagogy studies; reading strategies; temporalities; Canadian literature; critical disability studies

Selected Publications

Articles (Peer-reviewed)

[Forthcoming] McInnes, April. “From ‘Burden’ to Gift: Disability in Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman by Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson.”&�Բ�����;Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.

McInnes, April. “Memories, Manifestation, and Finding a Way Forward: Developing Agency through Spiralling Time in Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians.”&�Բ�����;Canadian Literature, no. 260, 2025, pp. 101–21, .

Awards and Recognition

SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship (2025–2028)
Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2024–2025)
����ֱ�� Dean's Award for Social Justice (2024–2025)
Duncan and Urlla Carmichael Fellowship (2023–2024)
Margaret Craig Education Award (2022–2023)
����ֱ�� Dean’s Award of Excellence (2022)

Graduate Supervision

Sam McKegney

Additional Information

Conferences:

Moderator. “Challenging Archetypal Narratives and Paratext.” Queen’s Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Queen’s University. (1 February 2025)

“Environmental Terrorism: BP, Art, and Indigenous Resistance in Canada.” Crude Representations: BP and the Cultural Imagination of Oil, The University of Edinburgh, online. (24 January 2025)

“Disrupting the Dominant Discourse of Victorian Studies with Decolonial Temporality: Challenging Chronological Time and Deploying Ceremonial Time in Drew Hayden Taylor’s The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel.” Re-imagining and Re-engaging with the Victorians, Queen’s University, online. (18 April 2024)

Current Positions:

Virtual Logistics Coordinator, Queen's Graduate Conference in Literature, ����ֱ�� (October 2025 – present)

Communications Coordinator, Queen's Graduate Conference in Literature, ����ֱ�� (October 2025 – present)

Recruitment Coordinator, Graduate English Society, ����ֱ�� (September – present)

Writing Consultant, Student Academic Success Services, ����ֱ�� (September 2024 – present)

Research Assistant, "Anishinaabemowin Language Acquisition Project," supervised by Dr. Lindsay Morcom, Faculty of Education, ����ֱ�� (January 2024 – present)