Writer Marni Jackson Honoured with Distinguished Alumni Award

Photo courtesy of Brian D. Johnson.

By Leslie Shepherd

When Marni Jackson Vic 6T8 arrived at Victoria College with a love of reading and writing, she found herself surrounded by teachers and peers who were shaping Canadian literature, criticism and cultural thought and others who would soon follow.

She would go on to join their ranks, building a career as one of Canada’s most distinctive journalistic voices and an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction.

Victoria University and the Alumni Association of Victoria College are recognizing that lifetime of achievements with a Distinguished Alumni Award, an honour Jackson said leaves her “flattered and honoured … and very gratified.”

Jackson came to Vic in the mid-1960s with little sense of what to expect.

“A friend of mine who was older went to Vic and said, ‘Yes, it’s great. Come join us’,” she said. “I went in rather blind, but I really lucked out because it was perfect for me and I had great, great teachers.”

As an English Language and Literature student, she studied with Northrop Frye and Dennis Lee, while Marshall McLuhan was also part of the broader campus environment.

Frye, she recalled, “was incredibly impressive and very open to first-year students… there was no question too stupid for him.”

Lee’s class had a focus on Canadian poetry. He became a writing mentor and Jackson later briefly worked for him at House of Anansi Press.

“I was always interested in poetry from my teens on,” she said. “What I didn't realize is that there were very few universities that offered Canadian poetry on their curricula. But guess what? Because Dennis Lee taught it, I had the opportunity to read and learn more about it in his course.”

Marshall McLuhan was teaching at the University of Toronto and held a graduate seminar at 671 Spadina Ave., where Jackson lived at the time and where the House of Anansi Press was launched. “I remember coming home and stepping over his legs on the way into the hallway.”

These figures didn’t feel “famous” at the time, Jackson said, just deeply engaged teachers and thinkers who were part of everyday campus life.

Outside the classroom, she immersed herself in campus life, participating in student productions including the Bob Revue. She acted in a Hart House Theatre production directed by William Hutt and contributed to Acta Victoriana, where she occasionally ran into a young Margaret Atwood.

“I remember going to a poetry reading by her in the Victoria College building and being very impressed, thinking ‘well, that girl's got talent’. I was surrounded by exceptional writers and didn’t quite realize it.”

After graduating in 1968, Jackson built a career in journalism and nonfiction, writing for publications including Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Rolling Stone and The Walrus. She held the Rogers Chair in Literary Journalism at the Banff Centre and was on the faculty of Mountain and Wilderness Writing there for 20 years.

Her bestselling 1992 memoir The Mother Zone was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. It was one of the first books in North America to explore the impact of motherhood on personal identity. She published several other nonfiction works, as well as a collection of short fiction.

She also worked across film, theatre, TV and literary journalism. She was a co-host of the book show Imprint on TVO and co-wrote with her husband Brian D. Johnson the documentary film Al Purdy Was Here. She has collaborated on a Dora award-winning stage show about the poet called "The Shape of Home: Songs in Search of Al Purdy."

More recently, she has written candidly about being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She is currently working on a new nonfiction book about the body.

Jackson said that budding writers studying at Vic are in the right place and that the only way to become a better writer is to write.

“If you write daily, if you do 500 words a day, in 150 days you’ll have a book. And it’s kind of that simple.”

Originally published in the Spring 2026 issue of Vic Report.

This edition features Kathleen Wynne reflecting on teaching at Victoria College, a Q&A with Professor Ira Wells on his role as president of PEN Canada, and Bob Rae’s return to Vic One after his UN tenure.

Read the full issue →