Gunnars has been teaching writing since the 1980’s in workshops and writing lectures, as well as serving as writer in residence at Regina Public Library and the University of Alberta, and she was Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, between 1990 and 2005. Several of her published essays also deal with the practice of writing.
The act of writing is a feature of most of Gunnars' work, both prose and poetry, so references and allusions to the writing life are present in her books, essays, and poems in general.
Collection of essays on writing:
Stranger at the Door: Writers and the Act of Writing. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004.