Petra Chambers

About

Petra Chambers (she/her) lives in the traditional territory of the PE’ntlatc and K’ómoks Nation. She writes creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms.

She has been featured by literary magazines in North America and internationally since 2023. In Canada, her work has been published by PRISM International, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Exile Editions, Contemporary Verse 2, Queens Quarterly, and the Literary Review of Canada, among others.

Her first poem was nominated for a 2025 Pushcart Prize. Her 2nd short story was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Fiction Prize. Her work is forthcoming in both Best Canadian Poetry 2026 and Best Canadian Stories 2026 (Biblioasis). She was the Yosef Wosk Fellow for the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive in 2024.

Petra has a master’s degree in Conflict Analysis from Royal Roads University and a graduate certificate in Evaluation from the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. These credentials were achieved one course at a time while working and parenting by getting up at 4am to write papers.

She is completing her first book-length manuscript, a genre-fluid project called ‘Retopia’.

PUBLICATIONS

Prose: Containment (forthcoming). Best Canadian Stories 2026 Biblioasis.

Poem: My answer to the question “how are you?” at the grocery store (forthcoming). Best Canadian Poetry 2026 Biblioasis.

Flash Fiction: DevCats (forthcoming). Federation of BC Writers 2024 Literary Contest Anthology.

Poem: 2050: My Testimony (forthcoming). Dalhousie Review.

Two Poems: Cold Device & Emigrant’s Postcard: a sonnet (Winter 2025). Literary Review of Canada.

Fiction: (dis)Connection at the Elbow of the World (December 2024). Exile Editions: Through the Portal: Stories from a Hopeful Dystopia.

Three poems: Recue, Intemperate & Home Befalling. (Fall 2024). The Fiddlehead.

Fiction: Containment. (Summer 2024). PRISM International Issue 62.3 HYBRIDS.

Essay: Naturally good: Monsters under the bed in utopia (Summer 2024) Queen’s Quarterly

Essay: Hard to See: a shortsighted history (Spring 2024) Prairie Fire

Article: Memoir: Opening Doors to Healing. WordWorks Magazine. Federation of BC Writers. (Spring 2024).

Poem: My answer to the question “how are you?” at the grocery store (Winter 2024) Contemporary Verse 2.

Two poems: Emily & 12-Year-Old Body (Winter 2024) Sea & Cedar Magazine.

Essay: Otherworldly Diaspora (December 2023) Headland.

Prose poem: Colonization Story (a corrective) (November 2023). The Woolf.

Poem: Love of Broken Things (July 2023) trampset.

Prose poem: This Narrator is Approximately Sixteen (July 2023) Pithead Chapel. Nominated for Pushcart 2025.