Morgen Mills
Bio
Morgen Mills
Morgen works with people and their information, knowledge, and ideas, moving freely across professions and industries. She is project-focused, helping people and institutions to solve problems and seize opportunities with skills developed through a career in education, record-keeping, and research, as well as training in literature (MA, PhD in progress) and library studies (certificate), and competitive experience as a titled chess player (WFM and former member of Canada’s national team). She combines strategic thinking with a commitment to understanding context and an acute, personal awareness of social complexity. For Morgen, everything comes back to a belief in the importance of conversations: of following them, of understanding them, and of making contributions of our own. She lives in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador.
Books
Morgen has been part of nearly every aspect of the book industry, as writer, editor, reader, reviewer, student, university lecturer, and library worker; through layout and design, copy-editing, indexing, research, strategic planning, even some illustration; organizing book launches and readings, selling and distributing books… and she loved it all. Becoming a publisher was inevitable. Nearly all books are collaborations, and Morgen is always looking to join new projects, and for other team members to join her own undertakings. Send her an email if you are interested in working with her, particularly if you are in or writing about the North or Atlantic Canada.
Selected recent projects:
- Remotely Useful (Council on Information and Library Resources, 2023), co-author
- Labrador Cinema (Brack and Brine 2022), co-publisher and co-author
- Berries of Labrador (Ellen Bryan Obed, Labrador Campus, 2022), editor
- Revitalizing PLACE through Social Enterprise (Slawinski et al. Memorial University Press, 2022), copy-editing
- Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures (Polack and Farquharson, Routledge, 2022), indexing
- The American Western in Canadian Literature (Deshaye, University of Calgary Press, 2022), indexing
- Adult Learning in Labrador (Special Issue 45.1, Them Days, 2021), editor
- Library and Information Studies for Arctic Social Sciences and Humanities (Acadia and Fjellestad, Routledge, 2020), contributing co-author
Writing and Research
As a consultant, Morgen most often writes in contexts, such as reporting and strategy, that do not address the public. However, she also takes pride in contributing to Labradorian and provincial periodicals such as Them Days, the former Labrador Life, The Independent, Newfoundland Quarterly, and Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. In her academic life, she has published or contributed to peer-reviewed papers in disparate fields, from literature to waste management to molecular biology, as well as too many conference papers, articles, and posters to count.
One recent and noteworthy article is her opinion piece for the Independent on ideas of “public safety” in her hometown of Happy Valley-Goose Bay. On a personal note, Morgen is also a tireless creative writer, and has published the odd short story or poem; her performance at the 2023 Pride Coffee House for Labrador Safe Alliance was the creative highlight of her year. Morgen is a proud member of WritersNL.
If you have a writing project in mind, or you have a great idea and you’re looking for someone to help put it in words, please get in touch by email.
Chess
As a chess player, Morgen represented Canada at the 2022 Chess Olympiad in India and the 2022 Pan-American Championships in Ecuador. She holds the Woman Fide Master (WFM) title and is a past winner of the Toronto Open, Newfoundland and Labrador Open, and Canadian Post Secondary Chess Championship (team event), among other tournaments. Recent media coverage includes interviews with the CBC (here and here), the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, and a more substantial conversation in The Pink News.
You can find two of Morgen’s best games in online databases: a win over FM Robert Hamilton at the 2011 Canadian Championship and a win over WIM Kristýna Petrová of Czechia, while representing Canada at the 2022 International Chess Olympiad.
The Full Picture
At Brack and Brine, we engage with people as people, and we bring our full selves to that engagement. That is a big part of why we formed the company in the first place. So do not hesitate to reach out with ideas, questions, or projects pertaining to any area of the skills and perspectives we offer.
As a student, Morgen is currently enrolled in the PhD program in English at Memorial University, preparing a long overdue dissertation on Labrador Life Writing. She has presented or published on this or related topic many times; one open-access example is a 2017 conference paper on Labrador nationalism.
As a community member and volunteer, Morgen is especially committed to the arts, to libraries, and to events, programs, and organizations supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ people and perspectives.
