Struthers, Elizabeth (Betsy)

Betsy (Elizabeth Jane) Porter was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1951. She received her BA in English in 1972 from Waterloo Lutheran University (which included one year at the University of Toronto on a Letter of Permission). She married James E. Struthers in 1971; they moved to Peterborough in 1977. She became involved in the literary life of the community as a committee member for the Peterborough County Board of Education Poetry Festival, 1985-1991, and especially as the founder in 1987 and first administrator of the Writers Reading Series at Trent University. She organized and hosted Poetry Month readings at various locations in Peterborough throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Since 1991, she has been a member of the informal Peterborough Women Writers’ Group, which presented a series of talks at the Peterborough Public Library in the winter of 1999-2000. She has also taught poetry workshops in many local schools, at Trent University and Fleming College. After serving as Chair of the Education Committee of the League of Canadian Poets, in which role she co-edited an anthology of essays on teaching poetry, and of the Feminist Caucus, she was President of the League from 1995 to 1997. Since the publication of her first collection of poetry in 1984, she has published nine books of poetry – Still won the 2004 Pat Lowther Award – three novels and a book of short fiction and has conducted workshops and read her work in cities and towns across Canada from Labrador to Victoria. A freelance editor of academic texts, she has worked for Peterborough-based Broadview Press since 1988 as well as other publishers, journals and individuals in Canada and the United States.