WRITER, TEACHER, COSMIC REACH-ER

Alayna Finley is a Deaf writer–illustrator, educator, and PhD student in Education at the University of British Columbia, where she is a recipient of the SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship.

Her creative work blends visual storytelling with a lived perspective on communication, connection, and belonging. As a child, she learned language by exploring the lyrical flow of words, an approach that continues to shape her creative expression and how she moves in the world. Drawing inspiration from the landscapes, light, and textures of the Pacific Northwest, she invites readers to explore difficult feelings in safe, reflective spaces.

At a local community college, she teaches English to Deaf learners using an ASL-English bilingual approach to language learning. At UBC, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Deaf education, dual language strategies, and approaches to working with Deaf learners.

Her academic research focuses on parental use of  ASL with young deaf children; Deaf cultural competency in medical training and early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) contexts; and how deaf experiences are framed in biomedical narratives.