After over two decades in molecular genetics research (mostly in McGill University-associated labs), Beverly Akerman realized she'd been learning more and more about less and less. Skittish at the prospect of knowing everything about nothing, she turned, for solace, to writing. She's been winning awards for her work ever since.
Sixteen of her short stories have appeared (or soon will) in publications hailing from Canada, the USA, and Germany: The Antigonish Review, The Binnacle, BluePrintReview, carte blanche, Cliterature, The Dalhousie Review, Gemini Magazine, Descant, Ear Lit Shorts, Fog City Review, The Nashwaak Review, The New Quarterly, Red Wheelbarrow, Rio Grande Review, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, and Windsor Review. Her story "Pie" was recently nominated for a Pushcart and a Best of the Net nomination (Sundress Publications) (read "Pie").
She attended the Kenyon Review Writers' Workshop, studying with novelists Brad Kessler and Nancy Zafris, and has also been a Fishtrap Fellow, attending the Oregon workshop with Pulitzer Prize Nominee and Kiriyama Prize winner Luis Urrea. In 2009, Beverly participated in The Banff Centre for the Arts's Writing Studio residency program as well as completing a Quebec Writers' Federation mentorship with Robyn Sarah.
Her other achievements include: first prize in the Fog City Writers Short Story Contest and in Gemini Magazine's Flash Fiction Contest; second place for the Sheldon Currie Fiction Prize; honourable mentions for The Potomac Review Fiction Prize, The Binnacle's Sixth Annual International Ultra-Short Competition, and the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick’s David Adams Richards Prize; finalist, Freefall Magazine’s Prose Contest, The Writers' Union of Canada’s Short Prose Competition (twice), and for the Glass Woman Prize.
Beverly's writing has also appeared in venues such as Maclean's Magazine, The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Montreal Gazette, A&U America's AIDS Magazine and on CBC Radio One, as well as in a number of other lay publications and learned journals. She is working on her first novel. Her most recent article is "'Have you ever seen a bus full of the English blow up?'".
Click the title to hear find her reading an excerpt from "Tumbalalaika."
It pleases her strangely to believe she's the only Canadian writer ever to have sequenced her own DNA.
Musings on art, writing, family, & whatever else strikes her fancy by recovering research scientist Beverly Akerman, MSc.
