Jessica Outram: Author and Teacher
Jessica Outram is a Métis author and teacher with roots in the Georgian Bay Métis Community. Jessica is co-host of The Hummingbird Podcast with Catherine Graham, a weekly podcast about identity, healing and wellness, the spirit of place, and the pull of mystery. She was Cobourg, Ontario’s 4th Poet Laureate.
In Spring 2023, Second Story Press published her first children’s novel, Bernice and the Georgian Bay Gold.
Jessica is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Her play Once Upon a Rocking Chair has been produced twice to sold out audiences.
Jessica is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. In 2022, Piquant Press published her first poetry collection, The Thing with Feathers.
Jessica currently works full-time as a centrally assigned Principal of Indigenous Education, supporting nearly 100 schools with K-12 curriculum and all Indigenous youth in an Ontario school board. She is an instructor in the Indigenous Bachelor of Education program at Trent University.
She regularly teaches artists and writers. In addition to writing, Jessica has studied watercolour, acrylic, mixed media, photography, and vocal music. She offers creativity workshops that focus on attention and ways of noticing using lessons offered by the natural world. She is a spiritual, creative, and helpful friend who wants to help you to thrive.
Jessica is a proud citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario with roots in the Georgian Bay Métis Community from the Verified Métis family lines of Solomon and Berger/Beaudoin on her mother’s side. Georgian Bay and family are main sources of inspiration. Her father’s family (the Outrams) settled in the Britt, Ontario area in the early 1900s.
Available Books:
- Bernice and the Georgian Bay Gold (children’s novel), May 2023, Second Story Press.
- The Thing With Feathers (book of poetry), April 2022, Piquant Press.
- Sunsets in Britt: A Georgian Bay Tradition (book of photography), October 2021, Sunshine in a Jar Press.
- Once Upon a Rocking Chair: A Play in Two Acts, updated in 2016.
- The Writing Spiral: Learning as a Writer, Sunshine in a Jar Press, 2014.
- From the Cottage Porch: An Anthology, Sunshine in a Jar Press, 2011.