Courtney Bates-Hardy
Poet & Editor
Courtney Bates-Hardy…
…is the author of Anatomical Venus (Radiant Press, 2024), House of Mystery (2016), and a chapbook, Sea Foam (JackPine Press, 2013). She is the co-editor of apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose (Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, 2021).
House of Mystery was nominated for an Elgin Award and Anatomical Venus was shortlisted for two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her poems have appeared in Event, Vallum, PRISM, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others. She has been featured in Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing and The Best Canadian Poetry 2021, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She won the City of Regina Writing Award in 2025 for her manuscript-in-progress, We Want to Live Like Trees.
She is queer and disabled, and one-quarter of a writing group called The Pain Poets. You can find her on Bluesky (@poetcourtney.bsky.social) or email her at courtney.bates@hotmail.com.
Photo Credit: Ali Lauren Creative Services
Anatomical Venus…
…is a visceral collection of poems… a journey through car accidents and physio appointments, 18th century morgues, and modern funeral homes. Grappling with the cyclical nature of chronic pain, these poems ask how to live with and love the self in pain. Magic seeps through, in the form of fairy tales, in the stories of powerful monsters, in the introspection of the tarot, and the transcendence of queer love.
The specific, compassionate language in this book does the ultimate work of creating a universal experience out of something so personal and raw — we are all this delicate, this worthy of grace. This is Bates-Hardy’s body, yes — but also, somehow, ours.
—Amanda Leduc, author of The Centaur’s Wife and Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space
Courtney Bates-Hardy 