Tonya Lailey (she/her) spent her childhood on a grape farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She left the farm for university — King’s College in Halifax, completing her undergraduate degree in political science. She received a scholarship to do a master’s degree in political philosophy at Queen’s University in Kingston, completed in 1998.

 

Lailey returned to the farm in 2000, to start a winery with her family and winemaker Derek Barnett. Certified as a sommelier that same year, she worked in the wine trade until 2020. During that time, she also raised two daughters in cooperation with her former husband. 

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Lailey was active in the Slow Food Movement, starting a local convivium with chefs and farmers first in London, Ontario, then joining the planning committee of the Calgary Slow Food chapter when she moved to that city. For years she wrote about local food and wine for Slow Food Canada, Culinaire, City Palate and Real Women London. The difficulties in practicing agriculture within capitalism are addressed in various ways throughout her writing.

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In 2022, Lailey received an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia.  Since then, her poetry and essays have appeared in literary magazines in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. She lives in Calgary. 

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Active in the recovery community, addiction and codependency are also recurrent themes in her work.

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Her first full-length collection of poetry, Farm: Lot 23 was published by Gaspereau Press in 2024.