“ I believe that literature is at the heart of what it is to be human. We are narrative beings. That’s how we discover who we are. And of course, the Scripture is the model for all of Western literature and its narratives about what it is to be human and to have our identity shaped by God.”

Lynn Szabo is Professor Emerita at Trinity Western University, B.C., Canada. She taught in the English department and served as the Department Chair and English Stream Coordinator for the Master in Interdisciplinary Studies and Humanities, Faculty of Graduate Studies. Her areas of scholarly expertise include American Literature and Creative Writing.

She is a distinguished scholar of the poet, mystic, monk and political activist Thomas Merton, an emerging, significant figure in twentieth-century American literary studies. She is the editor of the first comprehensive selection of Merton’s poetry, In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton.

As an Americanist, her other recent work includes a focus on the nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson and the modern novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Additional areas of scholarship include Poetics, Genre studies, Literature & Spirituality and Christian mysticism.  

​Lynn has an interest in convergences in spiritual and intellectual thought. She is well-travelled and has spent considerable time in the United States and in Europe. In particular, she has devoted many years of scholarship to the study of Thomas Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani, outside of Louisville, Kentucky and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Her strong interest in and dedication to the work of Merton– Catholic monk, writer and activist– has taken her to his childhood homes in the south of France and the town of Prades. Lynn enjoys explorations of the geographic, intellectual and spiritual and can often be found reading, researching or discussing. She has a deep enjoyment of music and in particular, relishes the piano music of Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy and Paganini. Lynn has played the piano throughout her life. Outside of her research and passion for teaching, mentoring and spiritual direction, Lynn enjoys attending lectures and concerts, tea with family and friends and taking in the beauty of Vancouver.