Reading in Tamagawa Garden

Bryn Skibo

Bryn Skibo (she/her) completed her master's degree (2013), doctoral degree (2020), and post-doctoral research (2021) at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), specializing in Narratology, Animal Studies, Indigenous Studies and Science Fiction. Her post-doctoral research (PI: Prof. Deborah Madsen) helped to establish a canon of early American vegan literatures, research which continues as the Vegan Literary Studies project (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation).

At VIU (2021-), Dr. Skibo often teaches first-year seminars on literary criticism, critical theory and Indigenous-focused research methods as well as upper-level seminars on Speculative Fiction and Indigenous Fiction. Dr. Skibo is also a co-editor for Transmotion, a permanently open-access, peer-reviewed journal of contemporary Indigenous Studies and literatures.

Dr. Skibo's most recent publication, "Indigenous Narratives" (co-authored with Deborah Madsen), was published in The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Literature (Wiley Blackwell 2022). Her forthcoming publications include

  • the monograph Margaret Atwood's Composite Creatures: Writing Between the Human and the Animal (De Gruyter Brill, expected Winter 2026),
  • the book chapter "Hope and Despair in the Time of Carnism" (in the edited collection Vegan Intersections: Histories, Literatures, Texts, De Gruyter Brill, expected Winter 2026),
  • the journal essay "Indigenous Apocalyptic Fictions as Healing Narratives in Future Home of the Living God and Robopocalypse" (co-authored with Jackie P’ip’ey’osot Schmidbauer-Finch, in Transmotion, expected Spring 2027).

In addition to her research and publications in Indigenous literatures, she has also published and presented on Posthumanism, Post-Structuralism and New Journalism. She can usually be found walking in the woods with her dog, Bonnie.

Links to some of Dr. Skibo's past and forthcoming publications / conference papers: