Denise Duguay

Copy editor, TV columnist

Denise Duguay is a Winnipeg poet who pays the bills by working as a copy editor and TV columnist.

A onetime bartender poet from the Norwood neighbourhood of Winnipeg (the sticks part), Denise studied journalism in Red River College’s Creative Communications program.

After stints as a news reporter at the Brandon Sun and TV columnist at the Winnipeg Sun, she shifted east to the Montreal Gazette for 23 years, where she surfed the technological changes in the news industry. Her roles there included working on the print news desk and overseeing the arts pages, then blog writing, social media engagement and overseeing the paper’s news app.

All along, she managed to write enough TV columns to justify spending an immense amount of time watching TV.

Returning to Winnipeg just as the pandemic hit in 2020, Denise landed at the Free Press, working on the news desk and writing a biweekly TV column.

In whatever few hours a week she is not watching TV, she remains devoted to poetry — published in the Free Press’s 2022 Writes of Spring competition. She can often be found taking in live local music, readings, theatre and open mics of any sort.

Greatest honour: four decades working at newspapers devoted to telling stories by and about the communities of Winnipeg, Montreal and Brandon.

Proudest achievement: a collection of family stories, poems and recipes she hopes to one day print out and stuff into the glove boxes of family and friends’ vehicles.

Biggest regret: first concert was the Bee Gees at the Centennial Concert Hall, but it was 1975 and she didn’t know any better.

Goal: travel more via television, literature, music and occasionally also by plane.