Adèle Barclay

Renaissance Normcore (Nightwood Editions, 2019)

If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood Editions, 2016)

“‘Perhaps a Wolf & a Lamb’ by Adèle Barclay, is a remarkable and multi-layered piece that uses fragmentation and fable to explore intimacy, trauma, and love. It is fierce yet tender, precise yet poetic—a piece we all found ourselves revisiting. The essay offers a glimpse into the creative process, revealing how stories and identities evolve in the wake of trauma. Beautiful and at times unsettling, Barclay’s piece feels like a gift.” — Lara El Mekaui, nonfiction editor of The New Quarterly and judge of Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest

“In this lyrical, searing essay, Adèle Barclay explores memory, trauma, and sisterhood through art and loss” — National Magazine Awards on “Cobra Blue Mustang Strat” Gold Winner 2025, Columns & Essays

“Barclay is gifted with a singular, prismatic imagination but it’s not just her gift that make her work so indelible–it’s her willingness to go where it’s so hard to go, where loss lives, where loved ones die and keep dying, where dreams sour and hopes are cut down. She goes to these places and brings back the bleak beauty and the textures, emotions, relationships, meanings that can only be found there. She journeys to and through love and anguish and death and desire and she brings us with her, somehow, and we’ve never seen anything like it.”
— Brenda Shaughnessy, “Introduction to Adèle Barclay” in Arc Poetry Magazine , Spring 2020

“What I like best about ‘Here Be Dragons ISO’ is its consistent ability to surprise. At each clever turn of phrase, the writer further penetrates their protagonist Danny’s heart, revealing her self-respect, insecurity, desperation, and hope.”
— Chris Benjamin, Fiction Contest Judge, The Fiddlehead, Winter 2023

“‘My Sister Sleeps on the Slope of Mount Sinai’ is a compelling and moving story that encapsulates emotional truths and explores universal themes of love, pain, and loss. The writer skillfully illuminates scenes and brings the reader squarely into intimate moments while highlighting their gift with words.”
— Angela Sterritt, Nonfiction Contest Judge, Room Magazine, Fall 2024