Arno Kopecky

Bio

Arno Kopecky is a freelance journalist whose writing focuses on international affairs, social justice and the environment. His stories have been published in The Walrus, Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and other Canadian and international publications.

In 2007, Arno received a fellowship co-sponsored by CIDA and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada; he moved to Nairobi, Kenya to write features for the Daily Nation, east Africa’s largest-circulation newspaper. Present during the violence that followed Kenya’s 2007 federal election, Arno reported on the country’s turmoil and subsequent, painful recuperation. He stayed in Kenya after his fellowship ended to help produce a literary anthology dedicated to the historic crisis. That anthology, Kwani 5, included over 50 contributors, tracking the election and its fallout through works of fiction, photography, creative nonfiction, personal testimony, and traditional journalism.

Born and raised in Edmonton, Arno holds a double major in Creative Writing and Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria. He has interned at Harper’s in New York, The Walrus in Toronto, and the local daily El Imparcial in Oaxaca, Mexico. His dispatches have appeared from as far afield as Myanmar, Iceland, Zimbabwe, and the west coast of British Columbia, which he now calls home.

Issue of Investigation

As a 2009 Gordon Global Fellow, Arno will explore Canada’s new focus on Latin America as a major regional partner. In particular, the countries of Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia represent various aspects of our policy shift away from Africa. Overlapping issues at the intersection of free trade, development assistance, First Nations governance and forest conservation all call for an integrated study. Arno will also investigate the old growth forests of coastal British Columbia, home to dozens of ancestral peoples, whose stories offer clear parallels to the Latin American situation.