Agnes Helen Fogwill Porter CM (May 8, 1930 – February 16, 2023)[1] was a Canadian writer, educator, and activist.
When their youngest child entered high school, Porter started work at the A. C. Hunter Library.
[6] In 1963, she began having articles, reviews, short stories and poetry published in Maclean's, Chatelaine, Star Weekly and Saturday Night.
Her works were then further published in the Quill & Quire, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review and the Journal of Canadian Fiction.
[7] By then, Porter's short stories, articles, poems, plays and reviews were published throughout Canada and abroad.
In 1977, she collaborated with Bernice Morgan and Geraldine Rubia on writing From this Place, an anthology from women writers of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Porter's work has been said to construct narratives "that focus on commonplace events in order to examine the motivations, material conditions, constraints and desires that inform women's actions and responses in apparently non-dramatic situations.
Porter taught creative writing with Memorial University Extension Arts from 1976-1990 and with the division of Continuing Studies from 1991.
[6] As part of that group, she helped bring Metroverse, a Canada Council initiative placing poetry on city buses, to St. John's.
[11] In the decade between 1975 and 1985, Porter ran for election to the Canadian Parliament as a New Democratic Party representative four times.
At least fifteen of Porter's works were honoured with awards in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competitions throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Porter also received the year's lifetime achievement award for her length of time as a leading figure in the Guild.