Anvesh Jain was born in Delhi and moved to Calgary when he was one year old. His poems have appeared in literary magazines in Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, India, and South Africa. He was an editor at The Hart House Review from 2018 to 2021. Anvesh is a chai enthusiast, and loves cricket. Pilgrim to No Country is his first book.

Frances Boyle’s previous books include the poetry collection This White Nest (Quattro Books 2019), Tower, a novella (Fish Gotta Swim Editions 2018), and Seeking Shade (The Porcupine’s Quill 2020), a short story collection which won first place for short fiction in the Miramichi Reader’s Very Best! Awards and was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award and a ReLit Award. Her writing has been published throughout North America and internationally. Born and raised on the prairies, Frances lives in the historic Lindenlea area of Ottawa, with her partner Tim and a large and slightly eccentric standard poodle. Openwork and Limestone is her third poetry collection.

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. She was the poet laureate for the City of Greater Sudbury (2016-18). Emptying the Ocean is her fifth book of poetry. Visit her website at kimfahner.com

Ben Gallagher lives in West Dublin, Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia) with his wife and two children. He is a Zen practitioner with the Oak Tree in the Garden sangha. This is his first poetry collection.

Skylar Kay is an Alberta-based poet and grad school dropout. Since releasing her debut collection, Transcribing Moonlight (Frontenac House 2022), she has moved back home to Calgary where she looks for the magic in everyday life. Her debut collection was well-received, earning a shortlist nod for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry, and won the BPAA’s Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry. These days, she likes baking muffins, tolerating her cat, and reading as much poetry as possible.

Barry Dempster, twice nominated for a Governor General’s award, grew up just a few blocks from the Scarborough Bluffs. He has published 18 collections of poetry, 3 volumes of short stories and 2 novels. In both 2005 and 2010, Dempster was awarded a Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Raised on Vancouver Island, Wendy Donawa then lived for three decades in Barbados, where she raised her family, studied at the University of the West Indies, and found vocation as a college instructor and museum curator.

Now returned to her birthplace, her heart and mind attend to poetry. The BC coast’s salty air and the Caribbean’s easterly trade winds make equal claim on her spirit.

Her poems have appeared widely in Canadian journals, anthologies, and three chapbooks.  Her first collection, Thin Air of the Knowable, (Brick Books, 2017), was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award.  Our Bodies’ Unanswered Questions is her second book.

She gratefully acknowledges that her Victoria home, in sight of the Sooke Hills and the Salish Sea, is on the traditional unceded lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt Peoples.

Visit her at wendydonawa.com

Tyler Engström is a writer based in Calgary. In 2017 he was a finalist for the Writer’s Trust RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poems have previously been collected in Drifting Like a Metaphor: Calgary Poets of Promise and have been featured individually elsewhere. Think of How Old We Could Get is his first book.

D.A. Lockhart is the author of multiple collections of poetry and short fiction. His work has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, Raymond Souster Award, Indiana Author’s Awards, First Nations Communities READ Award, and has been a finalist for the ReLit Award. His work has appeared widely throughout Turtle Island including, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, TriQuarterly, The Fiddlehead, ARC Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poetry from the Midwest, and Belt. Lockhart is a graduate of the Indiana University – Bloomington MFA in Creative Writing where he held a Neal-Marshall Fellowship in Fiction. He is pùkuwànkoamimëns of the Moravian of the Thames First Nation (Eelūnaapèewii Lahkèewiit). His work frequently draws on linguistic and cultural decolonization with a specific mind towards building new Indigenous mythologies and poetics from the crossroads of cultures that contemporary citizens of Turtle Island’s First Nations find themselves in. Lockhart currently resides at Waawiiyaatanong. The latest on his work can be followed at wazhashkpoetry.com

Andrea Thompson has been publishing and performing her work for over twenty-five years. In 2005 her spoken word album, One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award, in 2009 she was the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word’s Poet of Honour, and in 2019 her poetry album, Soulorations helped earn her the League of Canadian Poets’ Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award. Thompson is co-author of the anthology, Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, and author of the novel, Over Our Heads. Thompson currently teaches through Workman Arts, CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health), and the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She is a member of the Brick Books editorial collective and is the project manager for Brick’s multimedia hub, Brickyard. Thompson’s work is featured in the anthology, Best Canadian Poetry: 2020, and she is the recipient of the 2021 Leon E. & Ann M. Pavlick Poetry Prize.

Her website is www.andreathompson.ca

Rayanne Haines (she/her) is an award-winning hybrid author and pushcart nominated poet as well as a cultural producer of films, stage shows, and panels. Rayanne has penned three poetry collections – The Stories in My Skin (2013), Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2017), and Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun (Frontenac, 2021) which won the 2022 Stephan G. Stephansson, Alberta Literary Award for Poetry as well as being shortlisted for both the BPAA Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry, and the National ReLit Award for Poetry. She hosts the literary podcast Crow Reads, is the president for the League of Canadian Poets, and is an Assistant Professor in Arts and Cultural Management at MacEwan University. Rayanne has been published in the Globe and Mail, Minola Review, Fiddlehead, Grain, FreeFall, Prairie Fire, and others.

Alexander Williamson is a Canadian living with cystic fibrosis, and he is very lucky to be in Canada while having CF. Mostly Alex only cares about books and fighting people. He writes scary stories and sad poems; he fences and boxes too. He has a BA in English from Mount Royal University, and that made a big difference, but most of what he learned came from falling off of things, getting lost, or being punched in the face. Very Bright, Almost Pretty is his first book.

Lisa Richter is the author of the poetry collection Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017), and a chapbook, Intertextual. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Exile, The Literary Review of Canada, The Puritan, and Locations of Grief: An Emotional Geography (Wolsak and Wynn, 2020). She lives, writes, and works as an English as a Second Language teacher in Toronto.

Tyler B. Perry is a Calgary poet and high school English teacher. He is one of the organizers of Can You Hear Me Now?, the Alberta provincial junior high and high school poetry slam, and has performed his poetry to audiences across Canada and as far away as Japan. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Lessons in Falling (B House Publications, 2010) and Belly Full of Rocks (Oolichan Books, 2016). He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Tyler Trafford’s novels include The Story Of Blue Eye (a 2004 Grant MacEwan Literary Award finalist), Alexander’s Way and The Métis Girl. This series focuses on the historical relationships between Native, Métis and European cultures in southern Alberta.

His most recent book, Almost A Great Escape, A Found Story, won the 2014 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, the 2014 Writers Guild of Alberta Wilfrid Eggleston Nonfiction Award, and The City of Calgary’s W.O. Mitchell Book Award. The book details Tyler’s discovery of his mother’s past, including her forbidden Second World War love affair with the Norwegian pilot who escaped from Stalag Luft III.

Tyler grew up in Calgary and now lives on the Oldman River north of Pincher Creek, Alberta.

Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto, Ontario. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US and Europe, some in translation. He is the author of 21 books and a produced playwright.

D.S. Stymeist’s debut collection, The Bone Weir, was published by Frontenac House Press in 2016 and was a finalist for the Canadian Author’s Association Award for Poetry. Alongside fending off Crohn’s disease, he teaches creative writing at Carleton University. He grew up as a non-indigenous member of a mixed heritage family on O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation; these formative experiences continue to guide and shape his identity. As former president of VERSe Ottawa, he helped organize VERSeFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival.

Beth Everest’s poetry and fiction have been published in journals across the country. She has won numerous awards for her writing and her teaching. Silent Sister: the mastectomy poems (Frontenac House Ltd.) was short-listed for the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, plus the League of Canadian Poets Raymond Souster Award, and it won the Robert Kroetsch Alberta Book Publishing Award.

Beth holds a Master of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and Literature (University of Windsor) where she had the notable honor of studying with the great story-tellers W.O. Mitchell and Alistair MacLeod, and a Doctorate of Education (University of Calgary). She has recently retired from her position as Associate Professor at Mount Royal University where she taught creative writing.

Murray Reiss has lived on Salt Spring Island, B.C., since 1979. His first book, The Survival Rate of Butterflies in the Wild (Hagios Press), won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry published in Canada in 2013. His poetry and prose have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States, and short-listed for a number of prizes and awards. His chapbook Distance from the Locuswas published in 2005 by Mothertongue Press. Reiss brings his poetry to life on the stage as well as the page as a Climate Action Performance Poet and founding member of the Only Planet Cabaret.

Heidi Garnett was born near Gdansk (Danzig) during the Second World War. Prior to being expulsed in 1945-46, her Mennonite family had farmed the delta called the Danziger Werder since the 1570s. Her poems have been published in literary journals and anthologies across Canada, in England and in California. She was shortlisted for the Arvon prize in London and was runner-up for the Rattle prize in Los Angeles. In addition, she has won the Descant Winston Collins prize and placed or been shortlisted in poetry contests sponsored by Canada Writes, Arc, Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead, CV2, Freefall  and Room. She was awarded the Timothy Findlay scholarship by Humber College for her fiction work and included in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, ed. Stephanie Bolster, in 2008. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC Okanagan in 2010.