HAROLD RHENISCH is from the lost orchard culture of B.C.’s Similkameen Valley and the lost German socialist colony of the Southern Okanagan. After playing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he studied poetry with P.K. Page, Charles Lillard, Derk Wynand and Robin Skelton. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria (1980) and a MFA from the University of British Columbia (2007). He has published 11 previous full-length books of poems, 4 chapbooks of poetry, 4 books of innovative creative nonfiction memoir, a novel, a translation of a dissident East German playwright, and is an active editor of poetry and non-fiction, with special expertise in cross-genre works. He has won national and provincial awards for poetry, nonfiction, journalism and drama, including a CBC literary prize for poetry, the ARC poem of the year prize, and the George Ryga Prize for “The Wolves at Evelyn.” He spent the spring of 2013 at the Klaustrid Artist’s Residency in Skriduklautur, Iceland, uncovering the secret story of the writer Gunnar Gunnarsson, who tried to change the course of the Second World War through writing poetically-coded novels. He lives in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley, where he writes the poetic environmental and phenomenological blog okanaganokanogan.com.

CASSY WELBURN is a poet and storyteller whose work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies and on CBC radio. She has travelled across Canada sharing her work at festivals, and for audiences of all ages. She works part time as a teacher to new Canadians and as Artist in Residence at many schools. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Born in Canada, and of Iraqi heritage, ZAID SHLAH currently resides in Northern California with his family. His poetry has appeared in literary magazines, journals and anthologies in both Canada and the US. In May of 2005, he was awarded the American Academy of Poets Award. His first book of poetry, Taqsim, has been published in the US and in Canada (Frontenac House, 2006). He teaches composition and English literature where he is Assistant Professor of English at Modesto Junior College.

Nadine Mackenzie lives in Calgary, Alberta. She has published 27 books in French, including children’s literature, novels, biographies and history. Her book Du sang bleu dans l’ouest du Canada (Blue Blood in the West of Canada) received an official “Century Certification” to commemorate the First World War from the French government, the only award of its kind to be granted in Canada. She has previously been a journalist and now works as a conference interpreter. She received an M.A. in History of Music from the University of La Sorbonne and has completed Musicology and History of the Arts research at the University of Vienna. Nadine Mackenzie has also received a certificate in Fundamentals of Petroleum from the University of Texas and a certificate in Business Management from the Institute of Public Affairs of Dalhousie University. Her free time is spent riding horses.

Alexandria Patience is a writer, theatre director and performer. She was a founding members and Artistic Director of Maenad Theatre, Calgary. She has written or contributed to Mother Tongue, Aphra, The Cocoa Diary, Speaking in Mother Tongues and You. A section from You was translated into Spanish and published in the Argentinian anthology El Perfecto Sexo. She was a founding member of MasQuirx, Calgary´s visual and performing arts group which has toured internationally. For many years Alexandria programmed and curated film and video for herland, feminist film & video Celebration. Working with the homeless to give them a voice she created the video see me, which was screened at Document 2 film festival in Glasgow and is used as a Scottish medical training tool. Recent audio art works include: two outdoor audio walks, Portskerral Melvic Stories 1 & 2; DownloadLowdoan, a national podcast project in which she represented the North, the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and the Shetlands; and Fichead Eun, a Children’s Parliament audio and visual art project in the Uists district of Scotland. She creates large-scale public art projects and has exhibited art works internationally. She is currently living on the north coast of Scotland and working as a freelance interdisciplinary artist and storyteller who also creates festivals and community events. Alexandria’s core drive is the art of storytelling and a consuming interest in the rituals supporting us through death and grief.

A Calgary poet, Joan’s poems have been published in Grain Magazine, The Fiddlehead, FreeFall, Room, CV2, The Antigonish Review and numerous anthologies. Her first collection of poetry, Revolutions, (Leaf Press 2008) is about Tsar Nicholas II, his family and their demise. Folding the Wilderness Within (Frontenac House 2014) ‘mines the threshold of ordinary to show the gleaming moments in all our small lives’ and was short-listed for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Prize, 2015.

Joan has worked as Poetry Editor, written reviews and conducted interviews with FreeFall. She has been a guest poet at the Calgary Public Library Grand Opening and Canada Day celebration. There is a loft, desk and rocking chair overlooking the Rocky Mountains where her husband, children, grandchildren and friends come to sip tea and visit.

Colette Maitland has published in The Antigonish Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, Descant, Room of One’s Own, The Nashwaak Review, Wascana Review, The Prairie Journal, Freefall, The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Event, and frequently in The New Quarterly.

She placed first in The Kingston Literary Awards, The WFNB Literary Competition, and The CAA Niagara Branch “Ten Stories High” Short Story Competition. She was a finalist for the Writers’ Union of Canada Postcard Story Contest; her story “Keeping the Peace” appeared in Best Canadian Stories 11.

Keeping the Peace, a collection of short stories published by Biblioasis, was long-listed for the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

She lives in Gananoque, ON with her husband, Al Maitland.

Caroline Russell-King has written over 30 plays, which have been produced all across Canada. Mr. Fix-It was nominated for a Betty Mitchell Theatre Award for Outstanding New Play in 2012; and in 2013 Second Chance First Love was nominated for a Calgary Theatre Critics Award for Outstanding New Script.

Vivian Hansen has published in genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A Bitter Mood of Clouds was published by Frontenac House in 2013, a Long Poem that tells the story of Arne Petersen, who received gender reassignment in Denmark in 1953. Earlier work includes Angel Alley: the Victims of Jack the Ripper and Never Call it Bird: the Melodies of AIDS (Passwords Enterprises) and Leylines of My Flesh (Touchwood 2002), which chronicles the immigration experience of Danish Canadians. Vivian’s essay ‘Hundedagene and the Foxtail Phenomena” appears in Coming Here, Being Here: A Canadian Migration Anthology (Guernica 2016). Vivian teaches creative writing at Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary, as well as at the Alexandra Writers Centre. She is a member of The League of Canadian Poets and The Writers Guild of Alberta. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Deborah Lawson is a freelance writer, editor, communication consultant and Workshop facilitator. An award-winning poet whose work has appeared in literary magazines and poetry anthologies, she occasionally strays into songwriting. Deborah’s first book of poetry, Reckless Toward Blossoming, is to be one of the volumes in the 2013 Quartet series from Frontenac House.

Juleta Severson-Baker’s first book of poetry, Incarnate (Frontenac House, 2013) was short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. She lives, writes poetry and works as an Assistant Principal at Calgary Arts Academy in Treaty 7 territory.

Deborah Fannie Miller is a poet, singer, actor and children’s book author who lives in Calgary, Alberta. Miller’s poetry has been showcased on CBC Radio, The Women’s Television Network, and Vision TV. She has been widely published in literary journals throughout Canada and is in two anthologies: Tributes in Verse and Writing the Terrain: Travelling through Alberta with the Poets. She has had three collections of poetry published. Her first, I Will Burn Candles, was published by Bayeux Arts in 1995, as was her second, Grandmother’s Radio, in 2002, co-authored by Susanne Heinz. Vision TV produced Two Worlds Apart? a frequently repeated short film about Grandmother’s Radio. Her third collection, Landing at Night, came out in 2008, and her first children’s book, Grappling with the Grumblies, came out in April 2009. In March 2011, Grappling with the Grumblies won “The Steffie Young Readers Choice Award.”

Miller is a trained actor and singer with a BFA in Drama from Scripps College in California. She has done post graduate work at the Goodman Theatre School in Chicago, and is a graduate of both the Opera and Music Theatre Programs at the Banff School of Fine Arts. Miller brings performing expertise to all her presentations. Highlights of her singing career include playing Maria in West Side Story at the Banff Summer Arts Festival and originating lead roles in two world premiere Musicals at the Canmore Opera House: “Ferret God” and “Cafe Society” with Hummingbird Productions. In 2009, Deborah sang and performed her own poetry in the two women Cabaret “Heart Ache and Healing”, with Joanne Chapin, a Grammy and Juno nominated singer/actress.

Rose Scollard, co-founder of Maenad Theatre, wrote Metamorphoses I & II, Maenad’s first production. Three other of her plays — 13th God, Bete Blanche/Tango Noir, and Shea of the White Hands — also premiered with Maenad. During her time as Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers playwright-in-residence (1997) her play Caves of Fancy, about Mary Shelley and the creation of Frankenstein was presented at the University of Calgary’s international Shelley/Wollstonecraft conference and published in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).

Fifteen of her plays have been collected electronically in North American Women’s Drama, Alexander Street Press. Firebird, a play for young audiences, was translated into German as Feuervogel and premiered with Frie Kammerspiele in Magdeburg, Germany (2003). Tango Noir, a collection of three of her plays was published by Frontenac House (2012). She is co-author with Caroline Russell-King of Strategies: The Business of Being a Playwright in Canada. (Playwrights Union of Canada, 2000).

Among her theatre awards are the CBC Write For Radio Prize for The Man Who Collected Women (1988) and Alberta Culture Playwriting Competition prizes for Uneasy Pieces and Nosey Parkers (1985). Shea of the White Hands was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (1995). Her play I Ain’t so Tough will be produced by Urban Stories in Calgary 2016.

Patricia Ainslie was born in England, and raised in South Africa. She moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in the late 1960s to work at the Rhodes National Gallery with Frank McEwen, organizing and promoting the renowned Workshop School where artists produced monumental stone sculpture, featured in exhibits at the Rodin Museum, Paris, Commonwealth Institute, London and MOMA, New York. She lived in Iran and Mauritius before settling in Calgary in 1977.

She joined the Glenbow Museum in Calgary in 1979. For more than a decade, working as the curator of art, she built the art collection at Glenbow, and made regular studio visits to artists. She initiated the New Alberta Art program with six exhibitions per year, both solo and group exhibitions of contemporary artists, a program which ran for five years. Other work included the groundbreaking exhibit and publication Images of the Land: Canadian Block Prints, 1919-1945(1984), which toured Canada, England and Europe. More in depth print exhibitions featured artists Margaret Shelton, Laurence Hyde and Cecil Buller. For her important work in printmaking, she was elected to the Print Council of America. In 1987, she organized the retrospective exhibition, publication and tour forA Lifelong Journey: The Art and Teaching of H.G. Glyde, in 1991, Jack Shadbolt: Correspondences, and in 1998,Frontiers, Frontières, Fronteras: René Derouin. As Vice President of Collections from 1993 to 2006, she worked on innovative museological projects, including deaccessioning, grading of collections and repatriation. She has published in scholarly journals and presented lectures on these topics in North America, England and Europe.

Since leaving Glenbow in 2006, Ainslie has worked as an independent curator and writer. She co-authored Alberta Art and Artists published by Fifth House, Calgary in 2007 and Ted Godwin: The Regina Five Years: 1957-1967published by The Nickle Arts Musuem at the University of Calgary in 2008. She completed a 40-year retrospective exhibition and catalogue Surreal. Real. Ideal: The Paintings of Joice M. Hall for the Kelowna Art Gallery in March 2010.

Senator Patricia Bovey is one of Canada’s most prominent art historians, teachers and arts management consultants. She teaches 20th century Canadian art, curatorial practice and cultural resource management; her art consulting has spanned much of Canada; and she has published and lectures widely on aspects of western Canadian art. She is a former director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Among her many current roles she is Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of Manitoba, Adjunct Professor of Art History at the University of Winnipeg, Project Lead at the Buhler Gallery, St Boniface Hospital Winnipeg, a member of the Board of the Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation, Chair of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, and a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. She is a former member of the National Gallery of Canada’s Board of Trustees and the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts, and a past Chair of the Board of Emily Carr University Art and Design and of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization.

Her honours include the appointment as Fellow of both the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts and the Canadian Museums Association. She was awarded the Canada125 Medal, the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, the 2002 Woman of Distinction for the Arts, the Canadian Museums Association Distinguished Service Award, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal and the Association of Manitoba Museum’s inaugural Award of Merit. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Canadian Museums Association.

Kevan Anthony Cameron, also known as Scruffmouth is a scribe, spoken poet, performer and proud co-editor of The Great Black North. He is a veteran of the poetry slam scene in North America and aims to “edutain” with his work that focuses on knowledge of self, identity and vocalizing the stories of people of African descent at home and abroad. Kevan was born in Edmonton to Jamaican parents. He received his bachelor’s degree in General Studies from Simon Fraser University.

Scruffmouth’s poems have been published in We Have A Voice: An Anthology of African and Caribbean Student Writing in BC, Blood Ink: A University of Alberta Literary Journal, and Sudden Thunder: Spring 2011 Anthology. He has appeared on the ABC Family Television Movie Event Fallen, the Universal Pictures feature film, Love Happens, and the Mostly Harmless Productions internet web series White Collar Poet.  He is working on his debut album of spoken word and dub poetry.

As creative director for Black Dot Roots and Culture Collective (BDRCC); Kevan is responsible for the education of young people and adults through the spoken word, the creation of original forms of artistic expression and the celebration of the heritage of peoples of African descent. He has also contributed to the boards of the Black Canadian Studies Association as the elder youth representative and Spoken Word Canada as the Vancouver representative. He facilitates workshops with BDRCC and the WordPlay: Poetry in the Classroom program of the Vancouver Poetry House. He is active in the community, constantly seeking new ways to share knowledge for the empowerment of the people.

Dr. Valerie Mason-John is an award-winning writer. Her first novel, Borrowed Body  (later re-published as The Banana Kid) won the Mind Book of the Year Award, and was described as the “British Color Purple” by the UK media. She began her writing career as an international correspondent covering Australian aboriginal land rights and black deaths in custody, Sinn Fein prisoners in Northern Ireland, political unrest, education, and the arts. In addition to her award-winning novel, she is the author of four non-fiction books and a collection of poetry, prose and plays, several of which have been produced. She has edited two poetry anthologies and has contributed to several poetry and short story anthologies. Her poetry has been exhibited at all the major galleries in the UK including the National Portrait gallery, and two of her poems are permanent installations in the UK.

Mason-John was born in the UK and trans-racially raised in white orphanages and white foster homes. She is the descendant of slaves from Freetown in Sierra Leone on her biological mother’s side; her biological father’s side are McCarthys, some of whom lived in Nova Scotia during the 1700s and returned to Africa and Caribbean in the 1800s. She has been part of the Canadian community for 5 years, and considers herself a new African- Canadian connecting to her ancestors.www.valeriemason-john.com
www.bullyvictimbystander.com
https://www.facebook.com/IntoBEingLifeCoachingServices

Born in the farming community of Castor, Alberta, Rosemary Griebel grew up on the prairies. There she experienced nature as both immense and intimate. It’s common to say that there is little room to romanticize nature when the lives and deaths of animals are commonplace and all around you. Yet Rosemary, currently Special Projects Manager with the Calgary Public Library, where she has worked for 20 years, always knew experience as both something to be felt and something to be spoken of. Rosemary’s poems have been published on CBC’s radio program Anthology, in national journals, in the Calgary Transit’s “Poetry in Motion” series of in-vehicle posters, and in chapbooks by Leaf Press. In the past two years, her poems have won FreeFall magazine’s national poetry contest three times – in the second year of the contest, two of her poems, unknown to the judges to be by the same author, tied for first place.

Adam Melnyk is recognized as the leading authority on Canadian graffiti, having collected images on his site http://www.visualorgasm.com since 1998. By day, he works with low-income families and the homeless.

Aritha van Herk is the author of five novels: Judith, The Tent Peg, No Fixed Address (nominated for the Governor General’s Award for fiction), Places Far From Ellesmere (a geografictione) and Restlessness. Her wide-ranging critical work is collected in A Frozen Tongue and In Visible Ink; she has published hundreds of articles, reviews and essays. Her irreverent but relevant history of Alberta, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, won the Grant MacEwan Author’s Award for Alberta Writing and frames the Mavericks exhibition at the Glenbow Museum and Archives in Calgary. With George Webber she has published In This Place: Calgary 2004-2011 (photographs by George Webber, words by Aritha van Herk) and most recently, Prairie Gothic. She teaches Creative Writing and Canadian Literature at the University of Calgary. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence, and the recipient of the Lorne Pierce Medal and the Lieutenant Governor’s Distinguished Artist Award.