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Allan Briesmaster Allan Briesmaster is a freelance editor, publisher, and literary consultant. His most recent full-length poetry collections are Interstellar (Quattro Books, 2007) and Confluences (Seraphim Editions, 2009). He was centrally involved in the Art Bar Poetry Reading Series from its beginnings in 1991 until 2002. As an editor, working with several literary presses, Allan has been instrumental in the production of more than 90 books since 1998. He lives in Thornhill, Ontario. Sue Bowness Suzanne (Sue) Bowness is a writer and editor whose first book of poetry was published by Tightrope books in 2010. Her play "The Reading Circle" won the Ottawa Little Theatre's National One-Act Playwriting Competition in 2006, and she is currently working on a collection of short stories, a screenplay, and a novel. Sandra Kasturi Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer, and editor, as well as co-creator of a kids' animated TV series. In 2005, she won ARC magazine's annual Poem of the Year award. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine: Treatments of Light and Shade in Wordsand the Co-Publisher of ChiZine Publications. Sandra has written three poetry chapbooks and has edited the poetry anthology, The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, TransVersions, On Spec, Taddle Creek, several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, ÒDivine Secrets of the Yaga SisterhoodÓ appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and sporadically runs her other imprint, Kelp Queen Press. She managed to snag an introduction from Neil Gaiman for her first full-length poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books). She is represented by the Anne McDermid Agency, and is currently working on her first novel, a mythological noir. She enjoys single-malt scotch, red lipstick, and Viggo Mortensen.
Betsy Struthers Betsy Struthers is the author of eight books of poetry and three novels. Her most recent book, Relay, crosses genre between very short fiction and very long prose poems with a narrative twist. A previous book of poems, Still, won the 2004 Lowther Award while another, Running Out of Time, was the runner-up silver medal winner for the 1994 Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario where she works as a freelance editor of academic texts. Andrea Thompson Andrea Thompson is popular performer at venues and festivals across North America, and a pioneer of the Canadian Slam Poetry scene. Thompsons work has been featured on film, radio, and television; and included in magazines, literary journals and anthologies across Canada. Her Spoken Word CD One, was nominated for a Canadian Urban Music Award in 2005. Thompson was the host of season 2 of the 13 part television series, Heart of a Poet (Bravo TV, 2007), and is currently collaborating on an anthology of writing by mixed-race women. Merle Nudelman Merle Nudelman is a poet, editor, and teacher. Her first collection of poems, Borrowed Light, won the 2004 Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Merle's second book of poetry, We, the Women, and Borrowed Light each garnered a prize in the Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest. Her third poetry collection, The He We Knew, was recently released by Guernica Editions. Merle's poems have been published in journals, newspapers, and zines and she has done many readings from her books in Toronto, Hamilton, Central Ontario, and Arizona. She lives in Toronto where she teaches memoir writing and gives workshops on growth through writing as well as on the Holocaust.
Mark Sutherland W. Mark Sutherland (wmarksutherland.com) is a Canadian intermedia artist whose work blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, music and performance art. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Musicworks magazine and editorial correspondent for Rampike magazine. Recent work includes the following exhibitions; Scratch, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada (2005), Poetische Positionen II, Kasseler Kunstverien, Kassel, Germany (2006), Viaggio nella parola, Cassa di Risparmio, La Spezia, Italy (2007), Metalogos, Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario (2007), as well as public performances at THEWORDMUSIC Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland (2006) and Voice ++ Festival, Victoria, BC (2007), and Yuxtaposiciones Festival, Madrid, Spain (2008). Nobuo Kubota Nobuo Kubota was born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1932. He graduated from the University of Toronto School of Architecture and practiced architecture for ten years before leaving to become an artist in l969. He exhibited with the Isaacs Gallery, then became an independent artist. Much of his work is involved with sculpture installations, although he works also with other multi-media processes. He was an original member of the Artists' Jazz Band and of the dynamic improvising orchestra, the CCMC, and was one of the founding members of the Music Gallery. In the early 80's he was introduced to sound poetry by the legendary Four Horsemen. His vocal work is grounded in sound poetry, free jazz improvisation and Buddhist chanting. He has been performing as a solo vocalist locally and in Europe for 25 years. As an extension to his vocal work, he also works with visual sound poetry, exploring the strategy of "intermedia". His recent work, "new calligraphy," is involved with the writing of sonic sound scores. Currently, he is working on sound and music performances, compositions and videos. He lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. Bill Kennedy Bill Kennedy is co-author of apostrophe with Darren Wershler-Henry, a poetry editor at Coach House Books and artistic director for the Scream Literary Festival. He runs Stop14, a new media development company.
Erin Moure Erin Moure is a Montreal poet whose work has received several Canadian literary awards. She writes mainly in English, albeit multilingually. She has translated Nicole Brossard (with Robert Majzels), Galician poet Chus Pato, and Chilean Andrés Ajens into English, as well as Fernando Pessoa from Portuguese. In her own most recent books, O Cadoiro and O Resplandor, and Expeditions of a Chim¾ra (with Oana Avasilichioaei) poetry becomes hybrid. In O Resplandor, is the author Elisa Sampedr’n or Erin Moure? Both are invented by the very process of dealing with grief. O Cadoiro seems to immerse authorial voice (theoretical reflections on the archive), personal experience (a story of impossible love) and meticulous thinking, with the medieval Portuguese cantigas. And in Expeditions, at least two voices claim to be, or not be, the author. In each case, the names of the poets blur, sexes are indeterminate, multiple languages co-exist, the palimpsest is pockmarked, and at times the reader can't tell who sings of melancholy: it must be the book. Jocko Benoit Jocko Benoit is the author of two collections of poetry, An Anarchist Dream and, most recently, Standoff Terrain (Frontenac House). He has worked as an educator in the classroom, online and on radio and TV. The courses he has written for online study cover the popular media, especially film and TV, and soon video games. His screenplays have been finalist in Canadian and American competitions screenplays and his short stories have appeared in On Spec and the Tesseracts . These days he divides his time between Calgary and Washington, DC. Clara Blackwood Clara Blackwood is a Toronto-based poet and professional tarot reader. Her first poetry collection, Subway Medusa (2007), was the inaugural book in Guernica Editions' First Poetry Series, which features first books by poets thirty-five and under. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as the Hart House Review, Misunderstandings Magazine, Quills, Rampike, Carousel, and the UK magazine Dream Catcher.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn Lorri Neilsen Glenn has published four collections of poetry, including Lost Gospels (Brick Books, 2010). Poet Laureate for Halifax from 2005-2009, Lorri lives and works in Halifax, and returns often to the Prairies where she was born. LorriÕs work was the recent winner of The Malahat's Open Season Award for poetry. An award-winning ethnographer and essayist, she is the author and editor of six books on research and literacy, a forthcoming collection of essays on loss, and an anthology about mothers. Stan Rogal Stan lives in Toronto and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies throughout Canada, the US and Europe. He has 15 published books including 3 novels, 3 story and 9 poetry collections with a variety of publishers. He has several mss in the mail and is currently trying to finish a new collection of poems. He also has a foot in the theatre scene and has had plays produced on and off, generally for the Fringe crowd. Sharon McCartney Sharon McCartney is the author of For and Against (Goose Lane Editions, 2010), Against (Frog Hollow Press, 2007), The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Nightwood Editions, 2007), Switchgrass Stills (littlefishcartpress, 2006), Karenin Sings the Blues (Goose Lane Editions, 2003) and Under the Abdominal Wall (Anvil Press, 1999). Her poems were selected as finalists in ArcÕs Poem of the Year contest in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and were nominated for National Magazine Awards in 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007. She was awarded the Acorn-Plantos PeopleÕs Prize for Poetry for her book, The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder, in 2008. She is a graduate of Iowa WritersÕ Workshop (M.F.A.) and has a law degree from the University of Victoria and a B.A. in Economics from Pomona College in Claremont, California. She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she works as a legal editor.
Eve Joseph Eve Joseph grew up in North Vancouver. As a young woman she traveled widely before moving to Victoria where she now lives with her family. Her first book, The Startled Heart, was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award. The Secret Signature of Things is her second poetry collection. Catherine Owen Catherine Owen was born and raised in Vancouver and currently lives in Edmonton. She's been a teenage mother, an English major, a small business owner and a salesperson for a tattoo magazine. Currently, she writes full time in a wide range of genres, plays in two metal bands and is an amateur photographer. Her previous books with Wolsak and Wynn include The Wrecks of Eden and shall: ghazals. Russell Thornton Russell Thornton's recent books are House Built of Rain (Harbour, 2003), which was shortlisted for the ReLit Poetry Award and the Dorothy Livesay Prize (BC Book Prizes), and The Human Shore (Harbour, 2006). He won the League of Canadian Poets National Contest in 2000 and The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Prize for Poetry in 2009. His poems have appeared in several anthologies, most recently Open Wide A Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009), A Verse Map of Vancouver (Anvil, 2009) and Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry (Mother Tongue, 2008). He lives in North Vancouver, B.C. See: harbourpublishing.com/author/RussellThornton or Thornton999.blogspot.com
Leah Stinson Leah believes in the transformative power of storytelling. She is a multidisciplinary artist: painter, photographer, writer, poet, playwright and performer as well as a mother and grandmother. At night, when the city is quiet, she excavates the layers of experience she has accumulated, with the hope of finding the love that is at the centre of it all. Born and raised in Toronto, Leah returned to the city after living, loving, laughing and avoiding frostbite in Ottawa for 18 years. She has featured or appeared as a storyteller or spoken word poet at open-mics in Ontario, Quebec and Jamaica. A graduate of the dub theatre poetry residency at anitafrika! her solo work, iridescence, premiered at the audre lourde festival (as a raw work) as well as at the word, sound, powah! festival and was published in an anthology, s is for storytelling. She performed monologues from iridescence in Sketchin Toronto, under the direction of d'bi young, at Summer Works in 2009. Di Brandt Born in Winkler, Manitoba, and raised on a traditional Mennonite farm, Di Brandt is a multiple award-winning poet currently residing in Brandon, Manitoba, where she holds a Canada Research Chair at Brandon University. She has published seven poetry books, three books of creative and critical prose, and collaborated with Dorothy Livesay, Carol Ann Weaver, and RebeccaCampbell on a poetry and music CD. Adebe D. A. Adebe D. A. is a writer whose words travel between Toronto and New York City. She recently completed her MA at York University, where she also served as Assistant Editor for the arts and literary journal, Existere. Her work has been published in various North American sources, such as The Claremont Review, Canadian Literature, CV2 and The Toronto Star. She won the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005 to become TorontoÕs first Junior Poet Laureate. In 2008, she attended the summer writing program at Naropa University, where she mentored with Anne Waldman and Amiri Baraka. Her debut poetry collection, Ex Nihilo, was published this year by Frontenac House, one of ten manuscripts chosen in honour of Frontenac House's Dektet 2010 competition, using a blind selection process by a jury of leading Canadian writers: bill bissett, George Elliot Clarke, and Alice Major.
Leah Stinson Leah believes in the transformative power of storytelling. She is a multidisciplinary artist: painter, photographer, writer, poet, playwright and performer as well as a mother and grandmother. At night, when the city is quiet, she excavates the layers of experience she has accumulated, with the hope of finding the love that is at the centre of it all. Born and raised in Toronto, Leah returned to the city after living, loving, laughing and avoiding frostbite in Ottawa for 18 years. She has featured or appeared as a storyteller or spoken word poet at open-mics in Ontario, Quebec and Jamaica. A graduate of the dub theatre poetry residency at anitafrika! her solo work, iridescence, premiered at the audre lourde festival (as a raw work) as well as at the word, sound, powah! festival and was published in an anthology, s is for storytelling. She performed monologues from iridescence in Sketchin Toronto, under the direction of d'bi young, at Summer Works in 2009. Di Brandt Born in Winkler, Manitoba, and raised on a traditional Mennonite farm, Di Brandt is a multiple award-winning poet currently residing in Brandon, Manitoba, where she holds a Canada Research Chair at Brandon University. She has published seven poetry books, three books of creative and critical prose, and collaborated with Dorothy Livesay, Carol Ann Weaver, and RebeccaCampbell on a poetry and music CD. Adebe D. A. Adebe D. A. is a writer whose words travel between Toronto and New York City. She recently completed her MA at York University, where she also served as Assistant Editor for the arts and literary journal, Existere. Her work has been published in various North American sources, such as The Claremont Review, Canadian Literature, CV2 and The Toronto Star. She won the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005 to become TorontoÕs first Junior Poet Laureate. In 2008, she attended the summer writing program at Naropa University, where she mentored with Anne Waldman and Amiri Baraka. Her debut poetry collection, Ex Nihilo, was published this year by Frontenac House, one of ten manuscripts chosen in honour of Frontenac House's Dektet 2010 competition, using a blind selection process by a jury of leading Canadian writers: bill bissett, George Elliot Clarke, and Alice Major.
Jeramy Dodds Jeramy Dodds grew up in Orono, Ontario and is the winner of the 2006 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award and the 2007 CBC Literary Award in poetry. His first collection of poems, Crabwise to the Hounds (2008), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize and won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. He is currently living in Reykjav’k, where he is completing an MA in Medieval Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland. John Reibetanz John Reibetanz has published seven collections, and his poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, Canadian Literature, and The Fiddlehead. His writing has been shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards, and he has won first prize in the international Petra Kenney Competition. His newest books are Near Relations (McClelland and Stewart, 2005) and Transformations (Goose Lane Editions, 2006). Recent work appears in The Best Canadian Poetry 2009. Karen Enns Karen Enns is from southern Ontario, where she was born and raised in a Mennonite farm community. Her poetry has appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, PRISM international and The Malahat Review. She lives in Victoria, B.C. That Other Beauty is her first poetry collection.
Magpie Ulysses Magpie Ulysses has been called one of Vancouver's most "dynamic and prolific performance poets." Her "confessional poems hit hard, take the reader through intense visceral terrain, but never wallow." Over the last 5 years, she has performed at hundreds of venues, house parties, high schools, and festivals throughout Canada and the United States. Magpie has been a member of two national champion poetry slam teams, and is the winner of Vancouver's 2008 CBC poetry Face off. She is an anthropologist of the heart who doesn't apologize for her vastness when she sets fire to the shade you took for shelter from this thing we call living. Billeh Nickerson Billeh Nickerson is a former competitive junior curler. He is not sure how this has impacted his poetry, but he's sure it has. He is the author of The Asthmatic Glassblower, Let Me Kiss It Better: Elixirs for the Not So Straight and Narrow, and his most recent collection McPoems (Arsenal Pulp Press), which chronicles life on the other side of the fast food counter. He also co-edited Seminal: the Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets and is currently working on a new anthology with Mariko Tamaki entitled Permanent Markers (Tightrope Books, forthcoming). He divides his year between Toronto and Vancouver, where he teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
David McGimpsey David McGimpsey was born and raised in Montreal. He has a PhD in English Literature and is the author of six books including the award-winning study Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture, and the A.M. Klein shortlisted Sitcom (Coach House 2006). He is the subject of the forthcoming Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey from Palimpsest Press. His travel writings frequently appear in the Globe and Mail and he writes the 'Sandwich of the Month' column for EnRoute magazine. His sports radio talk show, Hump Night (co-hosted by Arpon Basu) can be heard every Wednesday at midnight on Montreal's The Team 990. He plays guitar in the rock band Puggy Hammer and teaches at Concordia University. Ian Williams Ian Williams is the author of You Know Who You Are (poems, Wolsak and Wynn, 2010) and a forthcoming collection of short stories from Freehand Books. He has held fellowships and residencies from Vermont Studio Center, Cave Canem, Palazzo Rinaldi in Italy, and his writing has appeared in Fiddlehead, Arc, Antigonish Review, CV2, Descant, Matrix, andDalhousie Review. He divides his time between Ontario and Massachusetts.
Sam Turner A professional gardener, married with two children, Sam Turner has won theBronx Council on the Arts BRIO award (1998, 2000, 2003 and 2010), the William C. Woolfson Award for Literary Excellence (1998), and the SUNY McIllwain Award for Poetry (1983). Sam has led workshops at the New York Public Library and the Bronx H.S. of Music. Published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Little Magazine, Nadir. Jane Munro Jane Munro grew up in North Vancouver. As a young woman Munro lived in Indiana, where she completed an undergraduate degree; in Turkey; and in Ottawa. She has taught Creative Writing at three universities and worked in the field of distance education. Munro now lives in a rural area on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. In 2009 she went to India to study yoga, which she has practiced for fifteen years. Jane Munro's new collection, *Active Pass,* explores connections among the visual arts, yogic discipline and self-regeneration. Paul Vermeersch Paul Vermeersch's new collection of poems is The Reinvention of the Human Hand, published by McClelland & Stewart in March 2010. He is also the author of the poetry collections Burn (ECW Press, 2000), a finalist for the 2001 Gerald Lampert Award, The Fat Kid (ECW Press, 2002), and Between the Walls (McClelland & Stewart, 2005). His poems have been translated into Polish, German and French. He is the also the editor of The Al Purdy A-frame Anthology, published in fall 2009 by Harbour Publishing. He lives in Toronto where he currently teaches at Sheridan College, studies at the University of Guelph, and works as poetry editor for Insomniac Press.
Daniel Scott Tysdal Daniel Scott Tysdal is the author of Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Coteau 2006), which received the ReLit Award for Poetry (2007) and the Anne Szumigalski Poetry Award (2006). His work has appeared in a number of Canadian literary journals and has earned him both an honourable mention at the 2003 National Magazine Awards and a place in the finals of the CBC's 2005 National Poetry Face-Off. He teaches creative writing and English literature at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. Antony Di Nardo Antony Di Nardo was born in Montreal and has lived in southern and northwestern Ontario, Toronto, the Eastern Townships, and Germany. He now lives in Oshawa although he has been teaching in Beirut for the past three years at the International College. His poetry appears widely in journals across Canada and internationally. Alien, Correspondent is his first poetry collection. Susan Briscoe Susan Briscoe's first book of poetry was published by Signal Editions of Vehicule Press in the spring of 2010. She has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and has won the Lina Chartrand Award. She lives in Montreal and Sutton, Quebec.
Ken Babstock Bio coming soon. Angela Rawlings Bio coming soon. Angela Szczepaniak Angela Szczepaniak has been a student nearly forever; a condition that has most recently landed her neckdeep in a doctoral dissertation on innovative poetry, dysfunctional detective fiction, and comic books. She also writes fiction, poetry, cartoons, and critical essays, and works as a poetry editor for Redwood Coast Press (California). One of her early career highlights was participating in LOCCAL's first hygiene themed poetry-art projectÑtraces of her visual poetry may still be found on placards in some of the finest public restrooms in Seattle. Her first book is a novel-in-poems, called Unisex Love Poems (DC Books). Eventually forthcoming will be her typeface-cartoon extravaganza, The QWERTY Institute of Cosmetic Typographical Enhancement.
David Clink David Livingstone Clink is the Artistic Director of the Rowers Pub Reading Series (rowerspubreadingseries.com), a monthly poetry and fiction series, and the webmaster of poetrymachine.com, a resource for poets with over 400 links to journals. David's poetry has appeared in over 50 journals, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, On Spec, The Antigonish Review, Cicada, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada, The Prairie Journal, and in ten anthologies, including Garden Variety, I.V. Lounge Nights, The 2008 Rhysling Anthology, and Imagination in Action. His poem "Falling" was a finalist for two awards in 2008: the Rhysling Award, and the Aurora Award. His poem "Copyright Notice 2525" was second in the 2007 Asimov's Readers Poll. David is the creator, host and organizer of the annual Dead Poets Society Night readings at the Art Bar Poetry Series, the event is now in its 6th year. David was the Artistic Director of the Art Bar Poetry Series (Canada's longest running and largest weekly poetry-only reading series) between June 2002 and June 2005. David and Myna Wallin are the co-publishers of believe your own press, which published 20 poetry chapbooks in 5 years, including WCDR Chapbook contest winner Resident Alien by Teresa Dunat Banks. He is the author of 5 poetry chapbooks and the editor of 7 others. His first book of poetry, Eating Fruit Out of Season was published by Tightrope Books in 2008. To find out more about David, go to his Web site, www.poetrymachine.com |
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