To the age of nineteen, Alyda lived on a dairy farm in Ontario which fostered her abiding gratitude for nature’s beauty. These early years also influenced her commitment to support local farmers, and, through the community created by farmers’ markets, getting to know the people who grow our food. She’s a year round commuter cyclist, backyard composter, and funnel spiders live in her basement. As a Professor at Atlantic School of Theology (AST), she teaches and researches in the areas of Christian Theology and Ethics with a focus on the poetics of ethics and theology. She regularly teaches courses in Sexual Ethics, Mystical Theology, and Theological Ethics & the Climate Crisis. She has been the President of AST’s faculty union since it certified in 2009, serves as Chair of the Research Ethics Board (AST), and as an Associate Editor (poetry) at the Dalhousie Review. Her most recent publications are works of poetry, Dust or Fire (2016) and Poisonous If Eaten Raw (2021, winner of the J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Prize).