Rona Altrows is the author of the short story collections A Run On Hose and Key in Lock, and the children’s chapbook The River Throws a Tantrum. With Naomi K. Lewis, she co-edited Shy: An Anthology. A Run On Hose won the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize; Shy received an Independent Book Publisher (IPPY) Award. Spring 2018 will mark the release of Altrows’s book of fictional letters, At This Juncture. Altrows is currently co-editing an anthology on “waiting” with Julie Sedivy.
Merle Amodeo was born in Toronto and now lives in the Beaches area of the city. She remembers writing creatively as soon as she could form letters into words. Her novel Call Waiting was published in 2009. The Ontario Poetry Society published two of her chapbooks, Let Me In and Because of You. In 2011, ten of her poems were published in English and Spanish.
Tori Amos is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, and composer. She is a classically-trained musician and possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range. She has been nominated eight times for a Grammy Award. In 2014, at age fifty, Tori released her fourteenth album Unrepentant Geraldines.
Buck Angel is an American trans man, adult film producer, and motivational speaker. He is the founder of Buck Angel Entertainment, a media production company. He received the 2007 AVN Award as Transsexual Performer of the Year and works as an advocate, educator, lecturer, and writer. Angel has served on the Board of Directors of the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance since 2010. The foundation works to affirm sexual freedom as a fundamental human right through advocacy and education.
Kate Austin is a multi-published author and poet. She has published novels, poetry, short and flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. She teaches writing and is an avid reader as well as writer. You can find out more about her at kateaustin.ca or at her blog WritingandEating.com.
Glenda Barrett, a native of Hiawassee, Georgia, is an artist, poet, and writer. Her work is widely published, including in Woman’s World, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Kaleidoscope, and Wild Goose Poetry Review, among others. Her Appalachian artwork can be found online at Fine Art America.
Arlene S. Bice is the author of twelve nonfiction books. She also leads writing workshops and writers’ groups; hosts book signings; and writes poetry, memoir, local history, and metaphysics. Arlene is a Board Member of the Warren Artists’ Market in Warren County, NC.
Maroula Blades is an Afro-British poet/writer living in Berlin. Winner of The Caribbean Writer 2014 Flash Fiction Competition and the 2012 Erbacce Prize for her first poetry collection, Blood Orange, Maroula’s works have been published in anthologies and magazines including Volume, Abridged O-40, Kaleidoscope, Trespass, Words with Jam, Blackberry, Thrice, and by The Latin Heritage Foundation and Peepal Tree. Her poetry/music has been presented on several stages in Germany. Maroula’s debut EP-album, Word Pulse, was released by Havavision Records (UK).
Caroline Bock is the author of two critically acclaimed young adult novels: Lie (2011) and Before My Eyes (2014). Her short stories and poetry have been published or are forthcoming with Akashic Press, Fiction Southeast, F(r)iction, Gargoyle, 100 Word Story, Ploughshares, Vestal Review, and O-Dark Thirty. Her poetry was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize and she was the 2016 winner of The Writer Magazine short story competition. She lives in Maryland and is at work on a new novel.
Virginia Boudreau’s poetry has appeared in a number of Canadian literary journals over the years. She lives in Yarmouth, a lovely seaside community on the south-western tip of Nova Scotia.
Susan Calder is a Calgary writer who grew up in Montreal. She has published two murder mystery novels, Deadly Fall and Ten Days in Summer, both set in Calgary and featuring insurance adjuster sleuth Paula Savard. Susan’s short stories have won contests and appeared in anthologies and magazines. Her story “Adjusting the Ashes” was inspired by her ten-year career as an insurance claims examiner. When she’s not writing, Susan is likely to be travelling or hiking. To learn more about Susan visit her website: www. susancalder.com.
Louise Carson’s books include A Clearing and Executor, both published in 2015, as well as Mermaid Road (2013) and Rope (2011). She has recently been published in Montreal Serai, JONAH, The Puritan, The Nashwaak Review, and The Literary Review of Canada. One of her poems won a Manitoba Magazine Award and was selected for The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2013. Louise lives in St-Lazare, Quebec.
Donna Caruso, an aging writer and filmmaker, rages against Mother Nature from her home in rural Saskatchewan. Her short stories have been read on CBC radio and published in several literary anthologies. Donna has won several awards for her work, including an award for Erotic Literature from Prairie Fire.
Jane Cawthorne’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, on CBC, and in academic journals. In 2011, she was a finalist for the Alberta Writers’ Guild, Howard O’Hagan Short Fiction Award for her story “Weight.” Her play, The Abortion Monologues, has been produced many times in the United States and Canada. Jane has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Solstice Program at Pine Manor College in Boston and lives in Toronto.
Tanya Coovadia was a technical writer, blogger, angry-letter-writer-cum-fictionalist, and Canadian transplant to Florida who occasionally dabbled in poetry. During the writing of her poem “Always a Middle-Aged Woman,” she realized her interminable hot flashes were not weather-related after all. A graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing from Pine Manor College in Boston, Tanya’s first collection of short fiction, Pelee Island Stories, won her a 2016 IPPY (Independent Publishers) award.
Lisa Couturier’s chapbook Animals / Bodies is the 2015 winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Chapbook Award. She is a 2012 Pushcart Prize winner for her essay “Dark Horse” and a notable essayist in Best American Essays 2004, 2006, and 2011. Her first book was The Hopes of Snakes and she currently is at work on a memoir about her horses.
Heather Dillaway is a Professor of Sociology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her research is focused on women’s menopause and midlife, and she often writes about the everyday experiences of going through these transitions. She teaches about women’s health, families, and gender and race inequalities.
Carolyn Gage is a playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of nine books on lesbian theatre and seventy-five plays, musicals, and one-woman shows, she specializes in reclaiming the stories of famous lesbians that have been distorted or erased from history. In 2014, she was a featured playwright at UNESCO’s World Theatre Day in Rome. She has won the national Lambda Literary Award in Drama, and her play Ugly Ducklings was nominated for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award. Her papers are archived at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College.
Elaine Hayes studied creative writing at the University of Calgary and the Humber School for Writers. Her essays and short stories have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Grain, Somebody’s Child: Stories about Adoption and At the Edge: A Collaborative Novel. She lives in sunny White Rock, BC, with her husband Gary. Her website is www.elainehayes.com.
Frances Hern wrote poetry for both adults and children, and three titles for Amazing Stories, a series about Canadians and Canadian history. She also contributed two chapters to the recent anthology Engraved: Canadian Stories of World War One. Her latest novel, The Tale of Irwyn Tremayne, was published posthumously in 2016. For more information about Frances’s work and life, go to www.franceshern.ca.
Shaun Hunter’s essays have appeared in newspapers, literary magazines, and anthologies. In 2013, she was a finalist for Alberta’s James H. Gray Award for her essay, “Skin Deep.” Her blog series, Writing the City: Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers, offers a virtual walk through the city as writers have imagined it. Shaun lives, writes, and wears her navy blue blazer in Calgary, Alberta.
Sally Ito lives and writes in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She has published three books of poetry. Her most recent collection, Alert to Glory, came out in 2011.
Marianne Jones’s poetry has appeared in Room, Lutheran Woman Today, Wascana Review, Danforth Review, Zygote, Prairie Journal, Prairie Messenger, and Christian Courier, and has won numerous awards. Three of her poems are permanently installed at Prince Arthur’s Landing in Thunder Bay. Her collection of poems Here, on the Ground is available from Amazon. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets.
Carol Kavanagh earned an M.Ed from the University of Saskatchewan, after which she worked for several years as a counsellor. Her literary work (short story, poetry, and nonfiction) has appeared in Grain, Grail, Transition, The 13th Edition of the Canadian Writer’s Guide, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Society. Her volunteer work includes supporting her meditation group. She enjoys walking, bike riding, cross-country skiing, gardening, and having fun with family and friends. She lives in Saskatoon with her husband.
Ellen Kelly lives in Airdrie, Alberta and teaches creative writing with the philosophy that people create more effectively when they are having fun. Her inspiration comes from the wide Alberta landscape that she loves, and from the amazing people she meets along the way. She has been published and praised for her short stories, personal essays, and freelance articles.
Shelley A. Leedahl’s books include I Wasn’t Always Like This (essays); Listen, Honey (stories); Wretched Beast (poetry); and The Bone Talker (children’s). Her work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry in English, 2013 and Slice Me Some Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Creative Nonfiction, and numerous other anthologies. She lives in Ladysmith, BC.
Cathy Cultice Lentes is a poet, essayist, and children’s writer. Her work appears in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies, and she is the author of the poetry chapbook Getting the Mail (2016). Lentes is a 2013 graduate of the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College and a 2014 recipient of a Work-in-Progress Grant from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. (www.cathyculticelentes.com)
Margaret Macpherson is an award-winning author from the Northwest Territories. She has published four works of nonfiction, a short story collection, and two novels, including the De Beers Canada NorthWords prize winner, Body Trade. Margaret is currently working on her third novel, Caribou Queen. She is a storyteller, a visual artist, and a teacher.
Colette Maitland writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Gananoque, Ontario. Keeping the Peace, a collection of short stories, was published in 2013. In 2014, she published her novel Riel Street. Her poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Write Magazine, and The Saving Bannister Anthology. Visit her at colettemaitland.com.
B. A. Markus is a writer, teacher, and performer who lives in Montréal. In 2014, she won the Carte Blanche/Creative Nonfiction Collective prize and she was long-listed for the CBC Creative Nonfiction prize in 2013 and 2016. Her essays can be found in many anthologies, including: In the Company of Animals; Salut King Kong; and Never Light a Fire in an Outhouse. She has performed her one-woman plays across Canada.
Rhona McAdam is a writer, food activist, and holistic nutritionist. Her poetry has been published in Canada, the U.S., and England since the 1980s. In 2012, she published an urban agriculture manifesto, Digging the City. Ex-ville (2014) is her sixth full-length poetry collection. She lives in Victoria, BC.
JoAnn McCaig started writing before the first bleed, and has continued well after the last. In the intervening years have come two books, three kids, and most recently the founding of Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in Calgary. “Last Blood” is taken from her second novel, An Honest Woman.
Leanna McLennan’s fiction and poetry feature visual artists, escape artists, and circus performers. Her current project, Go See, is a novel about the relationship between a white working-class teenage girl and a Métis teenage boy caught in the Reserve Scoop of the 1960s. Seen & Overheard contains observations made while riding the bus through Vancouver’s downtown eastside.
Gemma Meharchand is a Toronto writer who was born in South Africa. She has travelled to many places around the world, including a return to the land of her birth. Her writing is based on observations of the ways people are affected by geography. Her work is featured in Canadian Voices, An Anthology of Prose and Poetry by Emerging Canadian Writers, Vol. One (2009).
Noah Michelson is Editorial Director of Voices Department and Executive Editor of Queer Voices at The Huffington Post. He received his MFA in Poetry from New York University and his poems have been featured in The New Republic, The Best American Erotic Poetry from 1800 to the Present, and other publications. He co-hosts The Huffington Post Love+Sex Podcast, as well as weekly live streaming shows about queerness and culture on Facebook and YouNow. Michelson has also contributed to Out magazine Details, and BlackBook, and served as a commentator for the BBC, MSNBC, LOGO TV, Entertainment Tonight, Current TV, Fuse, and Sirius XM.
Lynda Monahan is the author of three poetry collections, A Slow Dance in the Flames, What My Body Knows, and Verge. She facilitates creative writing workshops and has been writer-in-residence at St. Peter’s College, University of Saskatchewan; at Balfour Collegiate, Regina; and at the Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The editor of several collections including Second Chances: Stories of Brain Injury Survivors; Skating in the Exit Light; and With Just One Reach of Hands, an anthology by the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Writing For Your Life group which she facilitates, Monahan has served on the council for the League of Canadian Poets, Sage Hill Writing Experience, and the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild.
E. D. Morin’s fiction, poetry, interviews, book reviews, and essays have appeared in such publications as Fiction Southeast, The Antigonish Review, Alberta Views, Wascana Review, and Alternatives Journal, and her work has been produced for broadcast on CBC Radio. Winner of the 2007 Brenda Strathern Late Bloomers Writing Prize, E. D. co-directs the annual Calgary reading series Writing in the Works.
Lou Morin often draws on her Swiss army knife skill-set when it comes to books. A twenty-five-year veteran of the publishing world, Lou is currently working on a memoir and scientific exploration entitled Stink: How I Came to Smell Crazy. Her contribution to the anthology is an excerpt.
C E O’Rourke is a naturalist/poet who writes from a small island cabin, inspired by marine life, coastal storms, and the tenacity of trees.
Steve Passey is from Southern Alberta. His prose and poetry have appeared in over thirty publications in Canada, the UK, and the U.S. including Existere Journal of Art & Literature, Minor Literature[s], and Bird’s Thumb. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee for Fiction.
Carolyn Pogue is the author of fifteen books, a frequent writing workshop facilitator, and an advocate for children living in poverty. Her latest book is Rock of Ages: The Oldest Rock on Earth, and Then Some. Carolyn lives in Calgary, Canada near the Rocky Mountains. Visit her at www.carolynpogue.ca.
Roberta Rees’s writing is described as musical and moving. Her publications include three award-winning books, Long After Fathers, Beneath the Faceless Mountain, and Eyes Like Pigeons, as well as many essays, poems, stories, and a thirty-minute film, Ethyl Mermaid. Her writing awards include the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, the Canadian Literary Award for Personal Essay, the Canadian Literary Award for Poetry, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Novel Award, and the League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Award.
Lori D. Roadhouse is a Calgary writer, poet, aphorist, and singer. She founded the Hilltop Writers critiquing group and co-created the 2003 Writing Toward the Light Poetry Contest/Concert. She is a featured reader at poetry and spoken word events, and has been published in many anthologies, magazines, and newsletters and on websites, radio programs, and CDs. Lori currently has a manuscript under consideration.
Shirley A. Serviss is an Edmonton poet and nonfiction writer, writing instructor, and staff literary artist on the wards for the Friends of University Hospitals. She has published three poetry collections and co-edited two anthologies. Her work has also appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and textbooks. Life, since age forty-five, has been a much happier time than any period in her adult life.
Donna Shvil is an artist and teacher, born in Montreal. She graduated from the BFA program at Concordia in 1986 and received her graphic design training at Dawson College, graduating in 1989. Predominantly known for her complex and contemplative figurative paintings, her work has been recognized for the portrait-like presentation and enhanced psychological realism of the painted figure.
Jane Silcott’s book Everything Rustles, published in 2013, was a finalist for the bc Book Prize in nonfiction. Her work has won a CBC Literary Award and a Room Magazine Prize. “Threshold” was a finalist in both the National and Western Magazine Awards and won the Creative Nonfiction Collective’s Readers’ Choice Award. Jane lives in Vancouver and is a mentor in the University of King’s College MFA Program.
Alison Stone is the author of five poetry collections including Ordinary Magic (2016), Dangerous Enough (2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and a variety of other journals and anthologies. She was awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin award. She is a painter, a licensed psychotherapist, and the creator of The Stone Tarot. She is currently editing an anthology of poems on the Persephone/Demeter myth.
Rea Tarvydas lives and writes in Calgary, Alberta. Recent publications appear in The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, and Grain. In 2012, she received the Brenda Strathern Late Bloomers Writing Prize. Her book of short stories, How to Pick Up a Maid in Statue Square, was published in 2016.
Taryn Thomson lives and writes in Vancouver. Her story “The Game” was long-listed for the 2010 CBC Short Story prize and shortlisted for The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. Her work has appeared in Room and Freefall.
Lise Tremblay works as a wildlife management technician. She has a passion for art, especially literature, and has been writing the book of her life. Lise lives in St-Lazare, near Montreal, Quebec, with her husband Paul, son David, and their cat Léa.
Rachel Williams is an Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Iowa and the author of Teaching the Arts Behind Bars (2003). For over a decade, she has worked as an art educator and researcher with incarcerated populations including juveniles around the U.S. She is interested in ethnography, visual culture, community-based art education, women’s studies, and program evaluation.
Gerry Wolfram is a prairie poet who has lived in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and in northern England. She is rooted in prairie landscapes, both urban and rural, and her poetry explores the landscape of human relationships, particularly the lives of women and girls. Recent poems have appeared in CV2 and in The Society. Gerry works in education, advocacy, and community development.