Poet and spoken word artist Jillian Christmas is a prominent Canadian voice on heritage, resilience, and community. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Christmas is known for her emotionally resonant writing that weaves personal and community histories. Her work focuses on anti-colonial resistance, family, heritage, and identity, much of which comes from her lived experience of Black diaspora, and of growing up and living on traditionally Indigenous lands.

Christmas was born in 1983 and raised in Markham, Ontario, a first-generation Canadian with roots in Trinidad and Tobago. Growing up, Christmas was influenced by writers such as Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde, through whom she found inspiration in language and storytelling. Poetry became a refuge when she was first introduced to it through the work of the Canadian poet Robert Service. Meanwhile, encouraged by her parents to perform readings during church services, Christmas would form her first strong connection with speaking before an audience. The ability to look people in the eye and communicate directly to them left a lasting impression on her, and would shape her relationship with spoken word. Yet it was not until she watched a spoken word DVD by Russell Simmons in her mid-twenties that she felt inspired to pursue performance poetry on stage.

Over the years to come, Christmas would build a distinguished career as both a performer and writer. She has represented Vancouver and Toronto at eleven national poetry events and became the first Canadian to reach the final stage of the Women of the World Poetry Slam. In 2021, Christmas received major recognition when she won the League of Canadian Poets’ Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award for spoken word poetry, as well as the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Canadian writers. She also began exploring how the immediacy of spoken word performance could be carried onto the page. Her debut poetry collection, The Gospel of Breaking, was shortlisted for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award. In addition to her poetry, she has written two children’s books, The Magic Shell and My Sweet Baby Book.

Beyond her writing, Christmas plays an active role in the literary scene as well, with many literary institution partnerships. She has worked as the artistic director of Vancouver’s Verses Festival of Words. She also served as the spoken word curator for the Vancouver Writers Fest, and the poet-in-residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2023.