Irene Marques is a bilingual writer (writing in English and Portuguese) and Lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) in the English Department where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has also taught at the University of Toronto, York University and OCAD University in various departments including, the Department of English, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics and the African Studies Program—and has also worked at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for 14 years. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, Masters in French Literature and Comparative Literature, a BA (Hon.) in French Language and Literature (University of Toronto) and a Bachelor of Social Work (Ryerson University).
Marques’ academic writing intersects with her creative writing as both tend to explore issues of personal and collective identity, mystical and mythical understandings of self, world and universe, gender, race, empire, class, cultural syncretism, the Portuguese colonial wars in Africa and the Portuguese fascist regime. Her academic and creative endeavors are epistemological and ontological inquiries that display the individual as an entity constantly yearning to be “whole” in a markedly socio-political world that divides, dissects, annihilates, humiliates, and dismisses multidimensional (non-rational) intelligences and their enlightened ways. Her narratives are multifaceted, transcultural, transhistorical and transtemporal, and rely heavily on allegory, metaphor, lyricism, and magic-realism.
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Marques’ creative writing publications include the poetry collections Wearing Glasses of Water (2007, Mawenzi House), The Perfect Unravelling of the Spirit (2012, Mawenzi House) and The Circular Incantation: An Exercise in Loss and Findings (2013, Guernica Editions), the Portuguese language short story collection Habitando na Metáfora do Tempo: Crónicas Desejadas (2009, Edium Editores) and the novels My House is a Mansion (2015, Leaping Lion Books/York University) and Daria (2021, Inanna Publications). Her Portuguese language novel, Uma casa no mundo, published by Imprensa Nacional (Portugal) in 2021 won the Imprensa Nacional Ferreira de Castro Prize.
Her academic publications include, among others, the manuscript Transnational Discourses on Class, Gender and Cultural Identity (Purdue University Press, 2011) and numerous articles in international journals or scholarly collectives, including African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture and Society, Research in African Literatures, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Journal of the African Literature Association (JALA), African Studies, A Companion to Mia Couto, Portuguese Studies Review and Letras & Letras.