Kate Rogers won first place in the subTerrain magazine Lush Triumphant Contest for her five-poem suite, “My Mother’s House.” Her poetry also appeared in Where Else? An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology. Kate’s poem “The Giraffe-bone Knife Set” was short-listed for the ROOM magazine Poem of the Year. “John and the Book of Kells” won first prize in the Book of Kells Contest at Trinity College Dublin. In 2019 Kate re-patriated to Canada after teaching in mainland China and Hong Kong for two decades. Kate is a former director of Art Bar, Toronto’s oldest poetry series.

Angela Waldie is a writer, editor, and university instructor, living in Treaty 7 Territory, in Calgary, Alberta. As she grew up in Creston, BC, her poetry often crosses and recrosses the Continental Divide. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Grain, Event, The Goose, FreeFall, The Antigonish Review, and various anthologies.

Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S., and other countries. She is the author of Wayside: A Small Boat, A Vacant Lot, A Man (poetry chapbook, 2026), Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (poetry chapbook, 2024), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems (2010), and Calla & Édourd (novel, 2009).

David Romanda is the author of a chapbook, I’m Sick of Pale Blue Skies (Ethel, 2021), and poetry collection, Why Does She Always Talk About Her Husband? (Blue Cedar Press, 2022). Romanda was born in Kelowna, BC, and lives in Kawasaki City, Japan.

Carley Mayson is a mentally ill writer who was born in Calgary, Alberta and attended Mount Royal University where she earned her BA in English. She then attended the University of Gloucestershire where she received her MA in Creative and Technical Writing. She loves her dog and her boyfriend.

Bruce Hunter is a writer, editor, speaker, and mentor. In 2024, his novel, Nella casa dell’orso, was published in Italy by iQdB edizioni. In 2023, his poetry collection, Galestro, was published in Italy, following the release there in 2022 of A Life in Poetry, Poesie scelteda Two O’clock Creek, also by iQdB edizioni. In 2021, his memoir essay, “This is the Place I Come to in My Dreams” was shortlisted for the Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Awards. In 2024, his long poem “Dark Water” from Galestro won Gold for poetry for the Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Awards. And he is a proud new grandfather of Alice, Julian and Lucas.

Born in Calgary, Alberta, Bruce was deafened as an infant and afflicted with low vision much of his adult life. He grew up in the working-class neighbourhood of Ogden in the shadow of Esso’s Imperial Oil Refinery and now decommissioned Canadian Pacific Railway’s Ogden Shops. Calgary is located on Treaty Seven lands, in the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the îethka Nakoda Nations (Chiniki, Bearspaw, Goodstoney), the Otipemisiwak Métis Government (Districts 5 and 6).

In his early teens Bruce discovered writing, for there he could hear everything – and be heard. After high school, he worked for ten years as a labourer, equipment operator, Zamboni driver, and completed his technical education and apprenticeship as a gardener and arborist. In his late twenties, his published poetry won him a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts to study with novelist W.O. Mitchell and poet Irving Layton. From there he went onto York University to study film and literature and taught in the creative writing department before landing a position at Seneca College.

His poetry, fiction, reviews, interviews, and creative nonfiction have appeared in over 90 blogs, journals and anthologies internationally in Italy, Canada, China, India, Romania, the U.K. and the U.S.

Bruce has authored seven poetry books, as well as the best-selling CBC Radio-produced 1996 short story collection, Country Music Country (the third edition, the Reboot appeared in 2018).

In 2009, In the Bear’s House, won the Canadian Rockies Prize at the Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival. In 2010, his book Two O’clock Creek – poems new and selected, won the Acorn-Plantos Peoples’ Poetry Award for Canada.

Bruce was the 2017 Author in Residence for Calgary Public Library. His past residencies include the Banff Centre, Deaf and Hear Alberta, Richmond Hill Public Library, University of Toronto, Mount Royal University, and many others across Canada.

Bruce is an associate member of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers, a full member of the Canadian Authors Association, a life member of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (C.H.H.A.), and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (C.N.I.B.), as well as long-time member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. For more than three decades, Bruce has championed accessibility for those with vision and hearing loss.

Anna Yin was Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate (2015-17) and has authored six poetry collections and four books of translations including: Mirrors and Windows (Guernica Editions 2021). Anna won the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTYs, two scholarships from USA and grants from Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. Her poems/translations have appeared at Queen’s Quarterly, ARC Poetry, The New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio. She has read on Parliament Hill, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, Edmonton Poetry Festival and at universities in China, Canada and USA.

Ontario-born Bruce McRae began writing poems in his 40s while dabbling with performance poetry in London during the mid 90s, where he lived for 20 years. A prolific writer, he’s had poems, plays and photographs published in hundreds of magazines, books and anthologies, with many of his poems put to music and broadcast in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada and Australia.

A musician, he’s played in a number of bands in Canada, then in England, and is still heavily involved with music, recording and releasing songs into his 70th year. Fugitive by nature, apparently, he’s lived all over hell’s half acre, and is currently settled in the Gulf Islands. A multiple Pushcart nominee and winner of the Libretto Prize, Boxing in the Bone Orchard is his fifth collection.

Kerri Huffman is a Toronto-based poet whose work has appeared in Acta Victoriana, CV2, Taddle Creek, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, and others. She received the Hart House Review Poetry Prize and was twice shortlisted for the Janice Colbert Poetry Award. juniper is her first collection of poetry.

Sanita Fejzić’s poetry and fiction have been published in The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, Room Magazine, ellipse, and Bywords, and shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize and the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Sanita lives with her wife and children on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people (Ottawa).

Richard Osler was part of the vibrant poetry community on Southern Vancouver Island. After a career as a journalist, CBC Morningside national business columnist and money manager, Quadra Books published his first full length poetry collection, Hyaena Season, in 2016. He led writer’s poetry workshops in Italy, the U.S. and Canada. And he was active as a poetry therapist in the addictions recovery community on the Island since 2009.

R.I.P. Richard Osler, October 25, 2024

Sarah Gibbs is a poet and playwright whose work has appeared in publications such as Descant, Filling Station Magazine, and Novelty Magazine. She is a George Orwell scholar and Fellow of the Royal Society of Art (RSA), and holds a PhD in English Literature from University College London (UCL). She lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she works as a professional librarian.

Bret Crowle is an emerging author who was born and raised in rural Alberta. She grew up participating in church and school choirs, and these communities taught her that making noise is a deeply healing art. This debut poetry collection only reinforces this love for making noise by challenging subjective societal norms and embracing the human right that is taking up space. When she’s not writing, Crowle can also be found plunking on a keyboard, howling show tunes, practicing one-woman renditions of her favourite Broadway shows, and waiting for spring so she can splash in puddles.

Brian Bartlett’s seven earlier collections of poetry include The Watchmaker’s Table, The Afterlife of Trees, and Granite Erratics. He has also published several books of nature writing and a gathering of his prose on poetry. His work has received The Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry, and two Malahat Review Long Poem Prizes. The many books edited by him include Alden Nowlan’s Collected Poems. After long periods living in New Brunswick and Montreal, Bartlett moved to Halifax/Kjipuktuk in 1990, and taught for three decades at Saint Mary’s University. He has kept a daily journal for many years.

Tom Wayman’s long writing career includes more than twenty poetry collections, three collections of critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction, and a novel. His honours include the 2022 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award and being named a Vancouver, BC literary landmark. He has worked at blue- and white-collar jobs across Canada and the US, including teaching English and Writing at both mainstream and alternative post-secondary institutions.Since 1989 he has been based in the Slocan Valley amid the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern BC, a locale reflected in many of the poems in How Can You Live Here?

Wakefield Brewster is a renowned poet, performer, and activist who served as poet laureate in Calgary Alberta from 2022-24. His work is known for its performative aspects and storytelling for inspiration. His performances are unparalleled for their powerful delivery and messages of positivity, sobriety, and wellness of all sorts. He is a Black Man raised in Toronto by parents from Barbados.

Straddling between Canada and China, Leilei Chen‬ lives her life learning the philosophy of the in-between space and its potential contribution to social progress. She translates Margaret Laurence’s short stories, Steven Grosby’s Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction, and contemporary Canadian poetry and essays. She is the English translator of contemporary Chinese ecological writings, and modern and contemporary women writers and scholar such as Ling Shuhua and Zhang Li. She publishes poetry, short memoir writings, and Re-orienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-cultural Understanding. She teaches at the University of Alberta.

www.leileichen.ca

Kerry Ryan has previously published two books of poetry, The Sleeping Life (The Muses’ Company) and Vs. (Anvil), which was a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the CBC poetry prize. She lives and writes in Winnipeg.

dee’s award-winning poetry, novels, short stories, and essays are sometimes influenced by her background as a chef and local foods advocate. She lives and works west of Saskatoon, where she served as the Saskatoon Public Library’s 35th Writer in Residence, and earned her MFA in Writing and MA in English.