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Christopher Lawrence Menard


Christopher Lawrence Menard is a writer (stage, screen, fiction & poetry), actor, producer, director, and singer. He was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario where he works in arts, culture and heritage for the City of Windsor. He designed and developed the City’s Arts, Culture and Heritage Fund (ACHF) grant program, oversees the historic Willistead Manor, produces the annual Poetry at the Manor reading event, and runs the City’s Poet Laureate & Storytellers Program.

As a writer, Menard’s original stage plays, Whatever it Was, The Best Man, The View From Here, and the DRAG Trilogy have been produced and played sold-out runs over the years at Windsor’s KordaZone Theatre. He has also enjoyed success as a screenwriter. He co-wrote the screenplay for the short film Gary Blaze – The Devil Wears Product, which headlined the Queer To Fly Film Festival in Toronto (2007). His screenplay for Whatever it Was, based on his stage play, received Best Feature Film and Best Director nominations at the Alberta Film & Television Awards (2010), before screening at the WIFF-Windsor International Film Festival (2015). His screenplay based on the DRAG stage play received special recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, placing in the top 15% for the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting contest (2010). He was awarded a Best Actor Award at the American International Film Festival for his performance in the feature film Planting Vines (2011). Menard was also the first recipient of the Windsor Endowment for the Arts (WEA) award for Emerging Artist in the performing arts (2010).

Menard worked with Marty Gervais to conceive and produce the anthology Because We Have All Lived Here (2017, Black Moss Press), about the history of Windsor. He edited and provided an introduction for the poetry collection A Dance of Self-Isolation: Covid Poems From the Biggest Little City in Canada (2021, Black Moss Press), examining the impact of the first year of the global pandemic on Windsor and Essex County. His poetry is published in the Windsor Review’s Border Issue (2015), and the Community Poetry Anthology from Gertrude’s Writing Room (2022).

Menard’s first collection of poetry entitled at the end, beginnings: A Memoir in Poems was published by Black Moss Press in 2022.

Christopher lives along Lake Erie in Kingsville, Ontario, where he loves spending time exploring and going on adventures with his husband, their young son, and their dog Dexter.

 

Black Moss books by Christopher Lawrence Menard