Fitsum Areguy is a writer, researcher, and cultural worker living in Southwestern Ontario. He is the co-founder and project director for Textile, a hyper-local arts collective in Kitchener-Waterloo.

His journalism grounds local, working-class realities in broader social movements and global issues. Voted multiple times by The Community Edition as Waterloo Region’s “Best Writer,” Areguy’s reporting and investigations have been featured in the Toronto Star, CBC, ByBlacks, The Breach Media, Waterloo Region Record, and Canadian Dimension. With Jeff Outhit, he was a runner-up for an Ontario Newspaper Award in 2020 for their analysis revealing COVID’s disproportionate effects within marginalized communities.

His essays, poetry, and criticism have been published in Briarpatch Magazine, New Sociology, Red Noise Collective, The Community Edition, and Korea Exposé, among others. Upcoming publications include a curatorial essay for In Search of a Loss of Self (McIntosh Gallery, 2024) and a poem in Poetry in Place: Poetry and Environmental Hope in a Southern Ontario Bioregion, an anthology edited by Deborah Bowen (Guernica Editions, 2025).

Areguy has been honoured with the Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers, recognizing his exceptional volunteer contributions to his community and the province, and his commitment to social justice activism and organizing. He has also received a provincial Black Excellence in Leadership Award (BELA) for his efforts to combat racial inequities in Waterloo Region.

With funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, Areguy is currently working on a collection of memoiristic essays, detailing his journey to Ethiopia and Eritrea to meet family for the first time while providing on-the-ground reportage into Canadian mining projects across the Horn of Africa.

Twitter: @fitsumareguy

Instagram: @fareguy