2025 Festival  Authors & Artists

Saliem Abraham is an Eritrean-born writer who spent most of her childhood in Sudan, where she grew up immersed in the rich cultures of both countries. Having witnessed the hardships her parents endured in Sudan, she is deeply moved by their story and aspires to share their journey through poetry and a novel in the future. Writing and reading books have always been her passions, providing a way for her to express her thoughts and emotions. Above all, Saliem Abraham is devoted to God, and her faith is central to her life. She has made a personal commitment to ensure that any future career or work she undertakes will honor and praise Him.

Sara Campos-Silvius (she/her) is a queer and multiracial Latine writer, director, producer, and performer known for her signature voice and dynamic energy. She was an Alberta Playwrights’ Network IBPOC Playwright In Residence 2023-24 and her short films have screened at noted festivals such as the Edmonton International Film Festival and Montreal Image+Nation Queer Short Film Festival. Sara’s multidisciplinary work has been featured in Capital City Press Anthology, Hungry Zine, Found Fest, Nextfest, Expanse, CONNECTIONS//COLLISIONS, and many more. Check out Sara’s work at www.saracs.art and @saracsart on Instagram.

Jayme Poitras is a 17 year old champion dancer, who specializes in traditional dancing.  She has won several accolades, placed in the top 3 at many pow wow competitions including Grand Ronde, OR, Squamish, BC and Maskwacis, AB, and has been a former Jr and Sr PFN princess where she has represented the Paul’s First Nation at various pow wows and social functions.

Ava San Agustin is an eighteen-year-old engineering student at the University of Alberta with a passion for both the sciences and the arts. Ava’s love for poetry began in grade ten, when an inspiring Language Arts teacher encouraged her to write more — even if only for ten minutes. While Ava has chosen a path that does not overtly let her explore this side, she hopes to keep creativity as an important part of her life. A fun fact is that Ava can say the alphabet backwards pretty fast!

Sanvi Regmi is nine years old and is one of the young poets featured in the 2025 Edmonton Poetry Festival THE TWENTY youth anthology! She loves to write poems and haikus. When she grows up, she wants to be an artist.

Information about Carmyn Effa is on its way!

The League of Canadian Poets is Canada’s only national professional poetry organization. The League serves the poetry community and promotes a high level of professional achievement through events, networking, projects, publications, mentoring, and awards. They administer programs and funds for governments and private donors and encourage an appreciative readership and audience for poetry through educational partnerships and presentations to diverse groups. As the recognized voice of Canadian poets, they represent poets’ concerns to governments, publishers, and society at large, and we maintain connections with similar organizations at home and abroad. The League strives to promote equal opportunities for poets from myriad literary traditions and cultural and demographic backgrounds.

Members of the League are professional poets who are actively contributing to the development, growth, and public profile of poetry in Canada.

You can visit their website, or find them on:

Instagram: @canadianpoets

Facebook: canadianpoets

Patti Sinclair is a ramshackle poet and settler on Treaty 6: the sacred land of the Papaschase. She has published chapbooks with Rose Garden Press & Red Nettle Press and her first full-length collection has just been published by At Bay Press. “The Late Season” is a narrative long poem about how death re-stories our lives. She has been a featured poet for the last two years in Edmonton Public Library’s Capital City Press anthologies and summer reading series,  Sounds from the Valley: Music and Poetry.

For more information, visit her website poet-at-large.blogspirit.com

Le Regroupement artistique francophone de l’Alberta (RAFA), porte-parole des arts et de la culture d’expression française de l’Alberta, connecte, soutient et favorise la professionnalisation, l’essor et la vitalité de sa communauté artistique.

Grâce au Regroupement artistique francophone de l’Alberta (RAFA), les artistes, travailleurs et travailleuses culturelles d’expression française de l’Alberta inspirent et rayonnent dans leurs communautés et au-delà de leurs frontières par leurs créations et leurs actions. 

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RAFA, the voice of French-speaking arts and culture in Alberta, connects, supports and promotes the professionalization, growth and vitality of its artistic community.

Thanks to RAFA, Alberta’s French-speaking artists and cultural workers inspire and shine in their communities and beyond their borders through their creations and actions.

Instagram: @rafa_alberta

Facebook: RAFAlberta

YouTube: RAFA Alberta

Bilingual poet, performer, producer, mentor and emerging playwright, Pierrette Requier was raised in the Peace River region of northern Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta and at St Stephen’s College in Edmonton. After teaching in bilingual programs in northern Alberta, a year’s exchange in Queensland, Australia, and teaching French Immersion in Edmonton, she returned to studies, built a private practice and committed to a writing practice, and subsequently achieved publication in poetry.

For the last 15 years, Pierrette has created space for writers at all levels by designing and hosting monthly, 3-hour Wind Eye Writing Seminars incorporating writing and spoken word and various forms of writing. She has featured presenters offering readings of various forms of writing. Not only has Pierrette sat on boards, liaising between the English and French literary communities of Edmonton, she has given numerous workshops, appeared at variety of conferences and festivals and has collaborated in exciting multi-disciplinary events across Alberta, in Winnipeg, and Montréal. She enjoyed her experiences while serving as Grant MacEwan University’s 20th writer-in-residence and as a poet mentor for the Writer’s Guild of Alberta Mentorship Program.

Thurga Kanagasekarampillai (She/They) is Tamil Deaf Non-Binary Genderqueer artist. She has worked as Deaf Interpreter and ASL performer for “The Enchanted Loom” (2016); Red Dress Production for “Drift Seeds” (2017); Million Billion Pieces (YTP 2019); The Holy Gasp (July 2020); Speculation (2018, 2019, 2021); Ministry of Mundane Mysteries with Outside the March (2020, Sound Off Festival 2021, 2022); At This Hour (2021/2023). She is also an actress and was in ‘The Tempest’ at Citadel Theatre as Miranda in Edmonton in April – May 2019. She was the one of three founders of Deafies’ Unique Time with Ali Saeedi, and Ralitsa Rodriguez. Deafies’ Unique Time – ‘Eye So Twisted’ (Rhubarb Festival / Sound Off Festival 2019), Deafies Detective Agency (Sound Off Festival 2020.) She is a founder and artistic director of Deaf Heart Theatre Collective, a new artistic collective, in Edmonton, AB.

You can follow her on Instagram @mxstarlagalaxy.

The Invisible Practice is an Indigenous-informed Deaf arts collective living and creating in amiskwaciwâskahikan, building capacity for Deaf-centric creativity.

To learn more and look at their past and current projects, as well as their members, you can visit their website, or check them out on Instagram @the_invisible_practice.

Connor is the founder and artistic director of The Invisible Practice, a Deaf arts collective based in amiskwacîwâskahikan. He is a producer, performer, and playwright. His first two major original productions, After Faust and CARBON MOVEMENTS, both premiered in Edmonton in 2023 after several years of development, and a third show is in the works. He has nurtured a lifelong passion for theatre and accessibility, and relentlessly explores the relationships between Deaf/Disability experience, art, politics, therapy, and advocacy, with a constant eye toward the collective liberation of all intersectional human beings.

Connor is a certified Access Activator through Tangled Art+Disability’s training program. While he also happens to hold degrees and diplomas from both University of Alberta and MacEwan University, these institutions have demonstrated complicity and aggression in colonial and genocidal projects. He no longer claims identity with these institutions until there is sufficient systemic change toward collective liberation.

You can follow him on Instagram @temporalways.

Jaspreet Singh (he/him) is the author of acclaimed poetry collections, non-fiction, novels, short stories, and a memoir. More and more his work engages with deep time and the ecological crisis. His most recent books are “How to Hold a Pebble” and “Dreams of the Epoch & the Rock,” both with NeWest Press (Alberta). 

Founded in 1977, NeWest Press is one of Canada’s first independent literary publishing houses. NeWest publishes literary fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry, and drama, as well as a line of mystery novels, with a particular interest in books by Western Canadian authors. Its Nunatak imprint is the longest-running first-fiction series in Canada.

NeWest Press books have won or been shortlisted for numerous national and international awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Awards, Giller Prize, Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Canada-Japan Book Award, Leacock Memorial Medal, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, Danuta Gleed, Lambda Literary Awards, Arthur Ellis Awards, Alcuin Society Awards, Sunburst Award, and ReLit Awards, as well as being featured on Canada Reads.

Notable NeWest titles include Blood Relations and Other Plays by Sharon Pollock, Chorus of Mushrooms by Hiromi Goto, Icefields by Thomas Wharton, Diamond Grill by Fred Wah, Playing Dead by Rudy Wiebe, The Widows by Suzette Mayr, All of Baba’s Children by Myrna Kostash, The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou, Extensions by Myrna Dey, Dance, Gladys, Dance by Cassie Stocks, The Shore Girl by Fran Kimmel, and Where It Hurts by Sarah de Leeuw. NeWest publishes ten to twelve books each year.

To learn more about NeWest, you can visit their website.

You can also find them on:

Instagram: @newest.press

Facebook: newestpress.page

YouTube: NeWest Press

Agatha Press (est. 2024) is a one-person (Matthew Stepanic), one-dog (Agatha) press for very good reads. They publish poems, essays, short stories, and a few surprises in small runs of chapbooks and broadsides.

You can visit their website or check them out on Instagram @agatha_press!

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The Person:

Matthew Stepanic (he/she/they) is a queer writer who lives and works on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton. They edit and design chapbooks for Agatha Press. They are a co-author of Project Compass (Monto Books, 2017) and the author of Relying on that Body (Glass Buffalo, 2018). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp, 2022), Plenitude, FreeFall, and others. They host VERS/E, a queer poetry open mic that runs the first Wednesday of the month at Felice Café from September to April.

The Dog:

Agatha is a French Bulldog-mix adopted in 2023 and born in 2019 (estimated). She enjoys fetch, peanut butter, and cuddles. She hates sudden noises, late bedtimes, and being ignored. Agatha cannot read. 

Hungry Zine is based out of Edmonton, and centres voices that are missing from traditional food media. They are a space for sharing stories, art and building community around food. They are a platform for writers, artists and creators who are inspired by food culture and stories in their art.

You can check them out on Instagram @hungryzine.

Jayden Tobert (she/her) is an English and creative writing student at MacEwan University and the president of The Bolo Tie Collective. She has been published four times in Bolo’s anthologies and been on the editing team for Bolo twice as well. She has been writing for about a decade and her favorite genres are fantasy, romance, and poetry. Jayden has always had a very active imagination – creating worlds, magic systems, and characters in her head – so writing is an outlet she uses to help her imagination flourish.

Zoey McRae (she/they) is a journalism student at MacEwan University and a volunteer on the executive team of the Bolo Tie Collective as a Blog Editor. They have a handful of articles published with MacEwan’s student magazine and worked as a poetry and copyeditor for the Bolo Tie’s 8th anthology. A poem they wrote will also be getting published in their 9th anthology when it gets released this coming fall. Zoey has been writing poetry for years, generally as an outlet for their mental health, and they strive for their writing to evoke strong emotions and to help make some sense of our complex world.

Chelsea Vowel is Métis from manitow-sâkahikan (Lac Ste. Anne), Alta., residing in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton). Parent to six, she has a BEd, LLB, and MA, and is a nêhiyawêwin (Cree) language instructor, public intellectual, writer, and educator whose work intersects language, gender, Métis self-determination, futurisms, and resurgence. Author of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit in Canada, and Buffalo is the New Buffalo, Chelsea and her co-host Molly Swain produce the Indigenous feminist sci-fi podcast, Métis in Space, and co-founded the Métis in Space Land Trust.

Mackenzie Ground is a nehiyawiskwew from Enoch maskekosihk Cree Nation and Edmonton amiskwacîwâskahikan. She is a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in the Department of English. She is a writer, visual artist, and a language learner of nehiyawewin, and her work considers the relationships of language, identity, and place to the land, to cities, and to the more-than-human beings who live there. She often works with writing, story, images, drawings, and collage. Her writing has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Denver Quarterly, and C Magazine, among others. She is thankful for the support of her friends, family, partner, and cats.

To learn more, visit her website: www.mground.ca.

The Polyglot is a community hub, magazine, and publisher created out of an overwhelming urge to respect, promote, and celebrate heritage and Indigenous languages that are often ignored or neglected in the literary, art, and publishing worlds.

Founded in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Canada) in 2016 by poet, researcher, and educator Adriana Oniță, it was billed as the first biannual online magazine devoted to publishing multilingual poetry and art in Canada. We have since expanded to publish poetry, art, stories, essays, and translations by both Canadian and international contributors.

The Polyglot has a role to play in maintaining heritage and Indigenous languages; they provided the first platform where multilingual artists and writers could freely live, write, gather, and hold events in other languages in Edmonton.

To learn more, visit their website: thepolyglotmagazine.com

SNAP is a leading centre for printmaking in Canada. SNAP is a non-profit artist-run centre dedicated to printmaking in all of its traditional and contemporary forms. We expand visual culture by supporting and collaborating with artists, audiences, and communities. SNAP provides critical space and resources for printmaking production, exhibition, and education.

In 1982, a handful of artists established SNAP as an independent, cooperatively-run fine art printshop in the historic Great West Saddlery Building in Edmonton, Alberta. In 1996, SNAP opened a gallery. In 2000, the society built its own gallery, the SNAP Gallery, which exhibits print and print-related art. In that year, SNAP also added its second printshop.

To learn more, you can visit their website: snapartists.com

HULLO! ALDAWGGIE HERE! RUFF RUFF AWOOO! 

I YAMMA ZINE MAKER & COMIC BOOK ARTIST & POETESS & MUTT! I’VE FIGURED THINGS OUT THE (HOW DO YEW SAY…) “HARD WAY”, BEING SELF TAUGHT AND SELF PUBLISHED. 

I’VE CREATED BOOKS BY A NUMBER OF MEANS INCLUDING: PROFESSIONAL PRINTING AND PUBLISHING WITH THA NATIONAL ARCHIVES, AS WELL AS TAPING TOGETHER ZINES MADE OF SCRAP PAPER FROM THE RECYCLING… AND NEWRLY EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN! 

IMAGINE HERE A CONCLUSION SENTENCE THAT TIES THIS BIO ALL TOGETHER SUCCINCTLY. 

A-THANKA-YEW! 

Abbigail Ketsa, she/they, is a settler poet and writer from Amiskwaciwâskahikan, currently living on Treaty 6 territory (St. Albert). She is a 2024 graduate from the University of Alberta with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, Creative Writing and Classics. Abbigail was the 2023 recipient of the CLC Poetry Prize; you can read their poetry in the 5th issue of Crab Apple Literary and on the Nowhere Girl Collective website.

A fixture in Edmonton’s jazz community, New Standards Music offers musicians, artists, and listeners a place to perform, meet, and network. Every Wednesday at The Common starting at 8pm. Come out and jam with Edmonton’s jazz musicians or simply watch the magic and get your groove on!

Please note, The Common is an 18+, minors prohibited establishment!

To learn more:

Instagram: @new.standards.music

Facebook: New.Standards.Music

Anindita Mukherjee is a poet and translator and a PhD student at the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Her latest book How Silkworms Break Their Eggs: Selected Poems (2024) brings for the first time the Bengali poet Mridul Dasgupta’s works in English. In 2022, her first chapbook Nothing and Variations was selected as the top ten Young Indian Voices. Her poems and critical works have appeared in The Guernica Editions, The Antonym, Madras Courier, The Lake, The Paris Institute of Critical Thinking, among others. Currently, she is working on her full-length poetry collection, titled Nothing Happens in Edmonton.

Julie Rak (FRSC) holds the Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Her latest book is False Summit: Gender in Mountaineering Nonfiction (2021). She has written extensively on nonfiction, including Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market (2013) and Negotiated Memory: Doukhobor Autobiographical Discourse (2004). Her latest edited collection is the Identities volume of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory (2022), and with Sonia Boon, Candida Rifkind, and Laurie McNeill, The Routledge Introduction to Auto/biography in Canada (2022).

Cy Strom works as an editor. He holds MA and MPhil degrees in early modern European history and has published in academic and other areas, including the visual arts. He edits in different genres and sometimes languages, and has had a role in developing professional editorial standards and educational materials.

The Carrot Community Arts Coffeehouse was established by Arts on the Ave, a charitable organization that started in 2005, and is committed to community development through the arts, along the City of Edmonton’s 118 Avenue (NAIT to Northlands).  

The Carrot opened in 2007 as a volunteer-powered, not-for-profit coffee house, and served also as the headquarters of Arts on the Ave. Over the years, The Carrot has become a second home for many people who come to the coffee house to connect with others and enjoy art in its various forms. The Carrot today continues to count on dozens of volunteers to thrive as a cornerstone of the Alberta Avenue community.

Community and creativity is the heart and soul of The Carrot and Arts on the Ave!

To learn more, please visit their website: www.thecarrot.ca

Facebook: TheCarrotCoffeehouse

Instagram: @thecarrotcoffeehouse

Devika Short is a Trinidadian-Canadian writer currently living in Edmonton. She

is passionate about the written word and she writes in the genres of poetry, prose,

and personal narrative. Devika was selected as a mentee in the WGA (Writers

Guild of Alberta) – Horizon Writers Circle mentorship program and she has been

published with Lilac Arch Press.

Catalina Morales Velez is a creative non-fiction and fiction writer who lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta. A native of Colombia, her life and work traverse art, language, media, marketing, social interactions, and being human.

Despite being rooted in words, her creations come to life in other mediums, such as drawing, the 9th art–comics, and stop-motion.

As a child, she always loved to hear and tell stories, an appetite that soon evolved into a profession as she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communications at the North Catholic University (Universidad Catolica del Norte) and honed her skills with diplomas in Marketing and Advertising from the University Institution Esumer and Arts Institute respectively. All while deepening her understanding of how we humans connect and understand each other with a Graduate Diploma from UPB (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana) that aligns communication, journalism, urban art, and artistic expressions—Urban Communications.

Catalina’s work has been featured in magazines in Colombia, Canada, and the U.S.A., including Entrepreneur Magazine, Life As A Human Magazine, The Polyglot Magazine, and Revista Cronopio. Her first publication is featured in Beyond Touch Sites: an Anthology of the Tangible by Laberinto Press. She is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, serves on the editorial board of The Polyglot Magazine, and LitFest.

You can learn more about her on her website: catalinamoralesv.com

Ting’s body of work represents diversity and multifariousness, intermixture of words, images, moves  (including dance & yoga), languages, cultural traditions and a variety of innovation and invention  and tons of fun. She embraces openness, diversity, equity, inclusivity and is a certified trauma informed Yoga instructor. 

Her most recent collaboration was with the Polyglot Magazine, Hungryzine, Alberta Writers’ Guild  Horizon Circle, Filipino Artists of Edmonton, Gallery @ 501, AGA (Art Gallery of Alberta) and The Shoe Project (amplifying the voice of immigrant women using shoes as metaphor) with the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre in Edmonton.

When Ting isn’t interpreting for the Canadian government or engaged in development work as a volunteer Sign Language interpreter, she advocates for self-care through activities such as yoga, intuitive arts, walking with puppies, hugging trees, or foraging in the nearby forest.

The Calamansi Club is a new all-Filipino indie pop band made up of 3 multi-instrumentalists: Chemarie Sia, Eoshanelle Francisco, and Ryan Lacanilao. Eoshanelle and Ryan first collaborated on poetry, and when Chema joined, they started making music. They write songs in both English and Tagalog.

The Olive is the longest running, off-campus, out-of-bookstore, poetry series in Edmonton. From its start at Martini’s Bar and Grill, to Hulbert’s Cafe, Leva Cappuccino Bar, The Empress Ale House, The Almanac, and now The Rooster, The Olive Reading Series is recognized as a unique and stimulating venue by both emerging and established poets.

A key feature of the Olive is the publication of an eight-page chapbook highlighting the Olive Reading Series’ featured reader/writer’s new work. This chapbook serves not only as a record and a keepsake of each reading, it is also a vital part of the experience. The Olive believes that a truly complete poetry and prose experience happens when you take the words in through both the ears and through the eyes.

All organization of this series is done for free by their volunteer Olive Collective members: Paul Pearson, Thea Bowering, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Chris Hutchinson, Wendy McGrath, Paul Pearson, and Colby Clair Stolson.

All collective members of The Olive Reading Series stand by the importance of the reading, publication and promotion of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction as something essential to the vitality of Edmonton. The Olive Reading Series serves as a venue for the sharing of ideas and the discussion of writing in relation to pertinent cultural topics.

For more information, you can visit:

Website: olivereadingseries.wordpress.com

Facebook: olivereadingseries

sakâw laboucan (they/them) is an amiskwaciywaskahikan-based poet, singer, and member of the Woodland Cree First Nation. They are a PhD student in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alberta studying how queer and trans Indigenous care practices are learned and enacted through storytelling.

Rapid Fire Theatre is proud to be Edmonton’s premiere destination for improvised comedy!

RFT aims to provide affordable, high-energy improvisation and alternative theatre to audiences while providing exciting opportunities for participants.

Check out RFT’s hilarious lineup of [weekly shows]! Every year RFT produces more than 300 improv shows. That means they have you covered for all your comedy needs almost all year long. Whether you’re looking for something a little different for a birthday party, bachelor/bachelorette party or just in need of some great comedy, RFT is your one-stop shop for laughs and good times.

In addition to the weekly shows, RFT produces [Improvaganza] (an annual international comedy festival), [BONFIRE] (a long-form improv festival) as well as [The Wildfire Festival] (a festival especially for gutsy jr. high and high school students).

Oh, and they [teach improv too]! RFT leads workshops for beginners, experienced performers, kids, and corporate groups.

Whoever you are, RFT has something for you. For more information, visit their website: rapidfiretheatre.com.

Joleen is an improviser, actor and writer based in Edmonton, Alberta.

She is a mainstage cast member of Rapid Fire Theatre, Canada’s third oldest improv company. She started with the company in 2007 and in 2017 she became the Director of Education after running the Outreach program for over a decade. She is also the co-director of the Sphinxes Outreach Program which aims to empower and employ female, trans, and non-binary improvisors by giving them the tools to teach improv and then deliver the workshops to other marginalized voices.

Joleen performs weekly in Theatresports, Maestro, and several long-form shows. Notable shows include Improvised Dungeons and Dragons directed by Edmonton’s own Mark Meer, Colin Mochrie and Friends in the Edmonton Fringe Festival, and she’s an original cast member of the hit show Off Book the Improvised Musical. Teaching and performing improv has taken Joleen all over Canada, the US, and Europe. She tours regularly with comedy partner Amy Shostak in their high energy, risk-taking improv duo Rä Power.

Improv isn’t Joleen’s only passion, she also writes and acts. She is a two-time Canadian Screen Awards nominee for both her performance and writing in the Canadian sketch comedy show Caution: May Contain Nuts on APTN. Alongside writing partners Gordie and Joey Lucius, Joleen was selected for the NSI Totally Television program in 2020 for their half-hour comedy, Lupita. The series is in development and hopefully will be available to a wide audience soon. The team of three is also working on a new half-hour sketch comedy show called thirtyONE which is also in development. She has written plays, musicals, sketch comedy, web series, and sitcoms. She thrives at telling stories whether it’s on the stage, on television, or verbally to anyone who will listen. Joleen is proud to be an Edmonton-based artist.

Autumn Strom (she/they) is a transfem performer, writer, and sound designer based in amiskwaciwâskahikan. She is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s BFA in Acting program, and is particularly interested in collaborating on theatre that is new or in development, especially if it’s queer! Select performance credits include: After the Trojan Women (Alma Theatre/Common Ground Arts Society), Bull (Edmonton Fringe 2024), The Immaculate Perfection […] (BodyCube Arts Collective/HPR), and The Comedy of Errors (Theatre Calgary).

Autumn’s newest work, Squirm, is being presented this May by Theatre YES as part of The Doorstep Plays. Autumn is a member of the Rookie Ensemble at Rapid Fire Theatre, where you can catch her performing nearly every weekend!

Susan Evans has been improvising since 2014, starting with the University of Alberta’s Notorious UIG.

She also joined Sorry, Not Sorry in 2017 and has taken many of the Rapid Fire Theatre public workshops. She is a member of the wonderful sketch comedy group Dang Dumb and has had the opportunity to perform across Canada with improv and cross-continentally with musical theatre. In her free time she likes to party with her dog Karen around the river valley. She would like to credit her parents for her sense of humour; as being born with scoliosis, terrible vision, British teeth, and the name “Susan” forced her to develop a sense of humour early on in life. Thanks mom and dad!

Dill Prusko joined Rapid Fire Theatre in 2017 straight out of high school, thanks to the Wildfire Festival and the NAIL tournament.

Their primary passions are working with youth and skittering around. Fun fact about Dill: they have a tattoo of Mill Woods Town Centre, and they are not at all apologetic about it!

Marguerite Lawler is a Rapid Fire Theatre improviser, comedian and actor currently based on Treaty 6 Territory.

They can be seen in shows like OffBook: The Improvised Musical, Murder at Makeout Point, LOLMANDY, and more. They have been improvising with Rapid Fire since 2015, and have performed around Alberta, Vancouver, and NYC. They also do sketch comedy around town. They love summer camp, their dog Molly, and their cats Kitty and Gregory Tent Pole.

Sam Stralak began improvising in 2009 with his high school team coached by Rapid Fire veteran and Associate Artistic Director Joe Vanderhelm.

In both 2011 and 2012, Sam competed in the CIG (Canadian Improv Games) National tournament in Ottawa. By the fall of 2012 he had joined Rapid Fire in its inaugural season at the Citadel Theatre downtown, since then he has coached Jr. high teams, taught workshops and proudly given back to the high school improv community by taking part in the CIG Regional tournaments and judging NAIL (Northern Alberta Improv League). When he’s not onstage Sam enjoys walking through Mill Creek ravine with his two dogs, trying new restaurants and watching movies.

Feel free to say “hi” next time you’re at a Rapid Fire Theatre show, he’s super into high fives!

Parkland Poets are a non-profit society with a mission to bring more poetry into their community and to the world.

The Parkland Poets’ Society was founded in January 2018 in Stony Plain, Alberta. The very first reading happened at the Stony Plain Public Library during an Albertan snowstorm, but 15 poets and poetry enthusiasts braved the snow and ice to see what a poetry reading was all about.

The early days of the Parkland Poets saw two in-person readings each month, on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays. In 2020, the format moved online to Zoom to keep the poetry and sense of community alive during the Covid-19 pandemic. The online readings were a success, with regular attendance by both local members as well as poets from across the globe. The Stony Plain Public Library relocated during this time. When in-person readings were reintroduced, the format was split to maintain one Zoom reading and one in-person reading each month – ensuring that both local and international members still have a place to share and enjoy poetry.

To learn more, visit their website: parklandpoets.com

Michael O’Driscoll is a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies and the Director of the Kule Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Alberta. He teaches and publishes in the fields of poetry and poetics, as well as the study of sound, listening, and literary audiotexts. His edition of Jackson Mac Low’s The Complete Stein Poems is forthcoming from MIT Press. He is an Affiliated Researcher of the Sound Studies Institute and a Governing Board Member of the SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership Group.

Odile Cisneros is a poetry scholar and translator with interests in Latin American avant-gardes, contemporary Brazilian poetry, concrete poetry, ecopoetics, and literary translation. She coedited Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos and has translated the work of Jaroslav Seifert, Régis Bonvicino, and Sérgio Medeiros, among others. Her translations were included in the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. She created and manages the website ecopoesia.com. She teaches at the University of Alberta, and in 2020 she was visiting professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Brazil.

Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003) played a pivotal role not only in Brazilian and Latin American culture, but also in the avant-garde at large. Campos was barely in his twenties when he founded the concrete poetry movement alongside his brother Augusto de Campos and their friend Décio Pignatari. Over the years, his writing evolved in different directions, including the experimental prose of galáxias. Parallel to his creative efforts, Campos republished long-forgotten poets, such as the Romantic Joaquim de Sousândrade and the modernist Oswald de Andrade and translated modernist and world literature, including Joyce, Mayakovski, Pound, medieval troubadours, Dante, Chinese classical poetry, Japanese Noh plays, Goethe, Mallarmé, Biblical texts, and Homer. Campos produced a complex oeuvre of extreme global and temporal breadth, gathered in more than 30 single-authored and collaborative volumes. He received numerous prestigious distinctions, including the Jabuti Prize (Brazil), the Octavio Paz Prize (México), the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France), the Prix Roger Caillois (France), and an honorary doctorate from Université de Montréal.

Theatre Network is a non-profit, charitable organization producing contemporary theatre with an emphasis on Canadian playwrights. They produce these stories out of their home, The Roxy Theatre, which they own and operate in Edmonton, Alberta.

For more information, visit their website: theatrenetwork.ca

Chanel Klein is a poet residing in Treaty 6 territory. Her poetry captures the absurd experiences of city life in Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto with visceral imagery that unpacks the hidden beauty in the grotesque. Her work is featured in ROOM Magazine, the Edmonton Public Library’s Capital City Press Anthologies and Gypsophila Magazine.

You can follow Chanel on Instagram @chanellovespoetry.

Ryan Fitzpatrick is the author of five books of poetry, including the forthcoming No Depression in Heaven (Talonbooks, 2025) and the recent Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023). Their first non-fiction book Ace Theory, a book-length essay in fragments about asexuality, will be published by Book*Hug Press in 2026. They are the publisher of the online-based and poetry-focused Model Press. They are the 2024-2025 Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. They’ve previously lived in Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.

You can find them online at ryanfitzpatrick.ca.

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of the poetry collections Observing the Moon (2015) and Elementary Particles (2023), which was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award and was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her writing has appeared in publications around the world, most recently Amsterdam Quarterly, Juniper, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and Ricepaper Magazine. She serves on the editorial board of Canthius magazine and lives with her family in Ottawa.

Lisa Baird is a queer poet, essayist, parent, and community acupuncturist living in Thadinadonnih (“the place where they built”) on the lands of the Attawandaron (Add-a-won-da-run) / Chonnonton (Chi-nawn-ton) people, and current treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, also known as Guelph, Ontario. Baseline Press published her chapbook, Persephone’s Crickets. Baird’s first poetry collection is Winter’s Cold Girls.

You can connect with Lisa through:

Bluesky: @eramosageese.bsky.social

Instagram: @eramosageese

Website: https://www.lisabaird.ca/

Omar Ramadan is a Lebanese-Canadian writer, poet, aspiring novelist, and PhD Candidate in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. He is the author of the chapbook Sesame Love and his work has appeared in CV2 and The Polyglot. He lives in amiskwaciwâskahikan / Edmonton.

You can connect with Oscar through:

Bluesky: @orphdc.bsky.social

Instagram: pinchofpulbiber

Shannon is a second career trauma-informed therapist and poet who turned to writing and psychological care in response to her lived experience as a child-mother-daughter and obstetrician-gynecologist. Her debut chapbook is Fallen Horseman. She lives in London, Ontario, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron.

Aaron Kreuter is the author of four books, including the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award shortlisted poetry collection Shifting Baseline Syndrome. We have had the pleasure of working with him on a book of short stories, Rubble Children: Seven and a Half Stories and a scholarly book, Leaving Other People Alone: Diaspora, Zionism, and Palestine in Contemporary Jewish Fiction, which was shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize. He lives in Toronto and teaches at Trent University.

You can connect with Aaron through:

Bluesky: @aaronkreuter.bsky.social

Kayleigh Cline (she/her) has been published in several Canadian literary journals, including FreeFall, CV2, and Funicular. Her work has also appeared on buses and beers. Her poem “American Robin” won the Alberta Magazine Award for Poetry in 2022. An active member of the Stroll of Poets Society and the Canty Collective of Writerly Women, she lives in Edmonton, Alberta. You can learn more about her work at www.kayleighcline.ca.

University of Alberta Press is a contemporary, award-winning publisher of scholarly and creative books distinguished by their editorial care, exceptional design, and global reach.

For more info check out their website:
https://ualbertapress.ca/

Or connect through their socials:

Bluesky: @UAlbertaPress

Facebook: @UAlbertaPress

Instagram: @UAlbertaPress

Funicular Magazine publishes short fiction, flash fiction, and poetry from emerging and established writers, as well as work from writers around the world, edited by Jason Lee Norman.

Follow on IG: @funfunfunicular

For more info check out their website:
https://www.funicularmagazine.com/

The Bolo Tie Collective is a SAMU student club whose mission is twofold: to bridge the gap between the students of the English and Communication Studies departments of MacEwan University and to foster a community within the broader MacEwan student body, comprised of those passionate about the process of creative writing.

Follow on IG: @thebolotiecollective

For more info check out their website:
https://thebolotiecollective.ca/

As an art form, poetry is deeply rooted in oral performance and there’s nothing like performing a poem to find out what works and what doesn’t. The Stroll exists to provide poets with an opportunity to connect with an audience, both through our Haven Reading Series and our annual printed anthology.

The Stroll are a warm and friendly grassroots organization, and we create a supportive community of artists that welcomes members of all ages and all levels of experience.

The Stroll of Poets offers a weekly reading series called The Poets’ Haven Reading Series, running from September to March on most Monday evenings and some Sunday afternoons. They also publish an annual anthology showcasing the poems of members who have read at a Haven event. 

For more information about what they do, check out their website:
https://www.strollofpoets.com/

Gavin Bradley is an Irish writer, musician, and paleontologist, from Belfast, living in Edmonton, on Treaty 6 territory. Some of his poems can be found in The Irish Times, The North, and Funicular Magazine. His debut poetry collection, Separation Anxiety won the Bridges of Struga International Poetry Award 2023, and his poem Brine won the first Edmonton PoFest Poetry Prize. His plays Seanchaí and The Vote were performed at the Stagestruck and Springboards festivals this year, and he is currently working on his second poetry collection.

You can follow him on Instagram @gavinbradleywrites or at gavinbradleywrites.ca 

David C. Brydges is a cultural entrepreneur and community builder. He is the artistic director of the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in Northern Ontario and the administrator of the oldest non-governmental poetry contest in Canada. (Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest 1970). His memberships include Stroll of Poets, the Edmonton Poetry Festival, Parkland Poets, the Ontario Poetry Society, Haiku Canada, Federation of Writers (Scotland) and the League of Canadian Poets. In 2021, he was appointed the first “Poet Emissary” for the Ontario Poetry Society.

Su Croll’s (she/her) Worlda Mirth was the winner of the Kalamalka New Writers Competition and was shortlisted for a Gerald Lampert Award. Blood Mother was shortlisted for Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award. Croll’s most recent poetry collection, Cold Metal Stairs, was short-listed for a High Plains Book Award. Her debut novel, Seeing Martin, was short-listed for a ReLit Award and has also been published as a French translation (Voir Martin). Su Croll lives in Edmonton.

Producer. Playwright. Sometimes poet. Megan Dart minds her p’s (but not always her q’s). Megan is proud to serve our community as the Executive Director with Fringe Theatre, producers of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. Alongside her sister Beth, she’s the co-Artistic Producer of Catch the Keys Productions, an award-winning scrappy indie theatre collective best known for its site-specific, immersive romps. She’s a sessional instructor with Grant MacEwan University’s Department of Arts and Cultural Management. And in another life, she was a collective member of the Edmonton Poetry Brothel and a member of the Edmonton Slam Team. Megan is a Grant MacEwan University Distinguished Alumni and a recipient of the Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award. She’s also Alice’s mom, which is the most important job of all.

Jennifer Bowering Delisle’s collection of lyric essays, Micrographia (2023) won the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize and the Writers Guild of Alberta Memoir Award. She is also the author of Deriving, a collection of poetry (2021) and The Bosun Chair, a lyric family memoir (2017). A new collection of poetry, Stock, is forthcoming with Coach House Press in 2025. She is on the board of NeWest Press and lives in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory.

Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She has won prizes such as: The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, The Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, Water-stone Review’s Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, and The South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Her work can be found in Redivider, New England Review, and The Southern Review, among others.

Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.

Metis poet, writer, and Professor Marilyn Dumont teaches for the faculties of Arts and Native Studies at the University of Alberta and is proud of Metis family lines from her Mother’s – Vaness / Dufresne families and her father’s – Boudreau/Dumont families.

She was awarded the 2018 Lifetime Membership from the League of Canadian Poets for her contributions to poetry in Canada. In 2019, she received the University of Alberta Distinguished Alumni Award and the Alberta Lieutenant Governor’s Distinguished Artist Award, and in 2022 was Awarded the Alberta Queen’s Platinum Jubilee medal for public service.

Her four collections of poetry have won provincial or national awards:  A Really Good Brown Girl (1996); green girl dreams Mountains (2001); that tongued belonging (2007); The Pemmican Eaters (2015).  A fifth collection surrounding Indigenous history of Edmonton, called South Side of a Kinless River was published by Brick Books in 2024.

Shima Aisha Robinson is an amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton) born student, community builder, poet and spoken word artist who embodies, with every literary and scholarly effort, the ancient meaning of her chosen pen name. Dwennimmen is the name of an ancient African Adinkra symbol, which means strength, humility, learning and wisdom. It is no surprise, then, that this veteran of the Alberta poetry community uses a searing intellect and dynamic precision-of-language to create poetry which ushers her readers and listeners toward greater understanding and poignant reflection.

For Shima Aisha Robinson aka Dwennimmen, poetry has long been a compass, a salve, an anchor and guiding light. She uses the potential and force of poetry to uncover the full range of her cerebral, linguistic and spiritual fortitude. This is why her every poem and performance testifies to an emerging power and wisdom, an authentic, deeply human potency which she hopes to pass on to listeners and poetry-lovers around the world.

She is the author of two books including HORN, 2016, Denseverse (self published), and Bellow, 2022, Glass House Press. She has worked, advocated, and represented our community as Artistic Producer for the Edmonton Poetry Festival Society from 2022-23 Festival Society, founder and curator of the WORD*LAB spoken word series, Learning and Outreach Manager for Fringe Theatre Adventures, and not least-of-all is also the The City Of Edmonton’s 10th Poet Laureate.

You can learn more on her website.

Luciana Erregue-Sacchi is a publisher, poet, translator, and cultural worker. She is the director of award winning imprint Laberinto Press and the author of the multilingual chapbook Of Mothers and Madonnas (Polyglot, 2023). Luciana’s cultural work revolves around nurturing and supporting underrepresented creators.

You can connect with her through:

Her website: www.laberintopress.com

IG: @wearelaberintopress

FB: Laberinto Press 

Kathy Fisher is an Edmonton-based, Montreal-born multidisciplinary artist, performance poet and documentarian. A host in the local literary and spoken word scene, Fisher regularly produces and hosts evenings of words and music whose poetry has been published in traditional and on-line literary journals. A keen collaborator, she regularly performs spoken word and song with a roster of musicians. In 2023, she wrote, directed and produced her Spanish-flu themed show, Vox Virago, as part of The Travellers, a six-person ensemble. Recent poetry commissions and performances include two tribute poems honouring colleagues at McGill Law School, where she had her first poems published 40 years ago. Her video-poem wabi-sabi, co-produced in collaboration with filmmaker Louise Abbott, screened in LA in November 2024 at The Film and Poetry Symposium where she performed a lively poetry reading. 

Stephanie Giroux (Sage) is an Indigenous Metis woman residing in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton) Alberta on treaty 6 land. She has been featured in the Edmonton Poetry Festival, the Edmonton Indigenous Poets Society, The Polyglot, The Stroll of Poets Anthology, The Heart of the City, and Tipi Confessions. Sage tends to write about her life experiences as an Indigenous French Metis woman.

Rayanne Haines is an award-winning hybrid author and pushcart nominated poet, producer and podcaster. She is the author of Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun (Frontenac House), winner of the 2022 Stephan G. Stephansson, Alberta Literary Award for Poetry and shortlisted for both the BPAA Robert Kroetsch Award, and the ReLit Award. She’s also the author of the poetry collections The Stories in My Skin (2013), Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2017), and now, What Kind of Daughter? (Frontenac House, 2024) a poetry and essay memoir exploring grief, identity, and gendered trauma. Rayanne served as the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Edmonton Region Federation of Libraries, is the recipient of an Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award, host of the Crow Reads Podcast, President of the League of Canadian Poets, and an Assistant Professor at MacEwan University. She has been published in various anthologies and journals including the Globe and Mail, Minola Review, Fiddlehead, Grain, FreeFall, Prairie Fire and others.

Ahmed “Knowmadic” Ali is a multi-award-winning poet, artist, educator, and community advocate whose compelling storytelling and inclusive leadership have transformed Edmonton’s cultural and social landscape. As Edmonton’s Poet Laureate (2017-2019), he championed diversity, equity, and community-driven change. Ahmed co-founded the Breath In Poetry collective, creating platforms to amplify marginalized voices and foster artistic expression across the city.

A dedicated leader, Ahmed has chaired the Equity Committee of the Edmonton Arts Council, served on the Law Enforcement Review Board of Alberta, and contributed to the Alberta Immigrant Women & Children Centre. His accolades include the Canadian Spoken Word Championship (2011), Edmonton’s Cultural Diversity in The Arts Award, and recognition among Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40. His work is featured in anthologies and educational curricula across North America.

Currently, Ahmed advises the National Council of Canadian Muslims while working as an entrepreneur, consultant, and educator. Collaborating with institutions like the University of Alberta and the Government of Canada, he advocates for equitable representation, transformative education, and social justice through the arts.

Alice Major has published twelve collections of poetry, two novels for young adults, and an award-winning collection of essays about poetry and science. A former chair of the Edmonton Arts Council she was the City of Edmonton’s first poet laureate (2005 – 2007). During her tenure, she founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival. Alice went on to receive the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2017 and an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Alberta in 2019.

You can visit her website at https://www.alicemajor.com 

Kim Mannix (she/her) is a journalist, poet and short fiction writer who lives and creates on Treaty Six territory in Sherwood Park, Alberta. She is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, Parkland Poets, League of Canadian Poets and its Parenting Poets Committee, and Vice President of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. Her first collection of poems, Confirm Humanity, is forthcoming with Wild Skies Press.

Catherine Owen, a “Vancouveritedmontonian”, is the author of seventeen collections of poetry and prose. Her latest collection, Moving to Delilah (Freehand Books, 2024) was recently longlisted for the Al and Eurithe Purdy prize. She lives in a 1905 house on Alberta Avenue with her four cats and works as an instructor at NAIT while running a poetry series called 94th Street Trobairitz and writing reviews for Alberta Views.

Follow on IG: mslyricspoetryoutlaws

Don Perkins is a member of the Edmonton Stroll of Poets and Parkland Poets, and a former board member of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. For many years, with fellow Stroll member Gary Garrison, he has helped provide monthly poetry prompt sets to engage and stimulate interested area poets. He gets a special lift from free-ranging poetic exchanges with Anna Marie Sewell and Kayleigh Cline, exchanges (or conversations) they call “mustangs.”

Daniel Poitras is a half-breed poet from the Paul First Nation. Currently residing in Edmonton, he writes about the challenges that Indigenous and Metis people face today. He has been published in the Home and Away anthology (House of Blue Skies, 2009), The Malahat Review, Grain Magazine, The Polyglot and in the Edmonton Poetry Festival’s Poetry Moves on Transit program.

Anna Marie Sewell is an award-winning multi-genre writer and performer of Mi’gmaq/Anishinaabe/Polish descent living in Edmonton, Canada. Her artistic practice centres collaborative projects at the intersections of culture, language, and modality, including Ancestors & Elders, Reconciling Edmonton (which featured the first ever Round Dance at Edmonton’s City Hall), Braidings, Honour Songs, Heart of the Flower, Big Sky Theatre (theatre with urban Indigenous youth), and The PoemCatcher public art installation. A founding member of the Stroll of Poets, she has served as Edmonton’s 4th Poet Laureate (2011-2013) and MacEwan University’s 2019/20 Writer in Residence.

Connect to Anna Marie Sewell’s written work through prairiepomes.com, via her poetry collections Fifth World Drum (Frontenac House, 2009) and For the Changing Moon: Poems & Songs (Thistledown Press, 2018), via her debut novel, Humane (Stonehouse Publishing, 2020), or the sequel, Urbane (Stonehouse Publishing, 2023). Anna Marie was published in The Polyglot’s Issue 3, CanLit: Curating our Canons, and Issue 6: nimitêyaniy.

Kelly Shepherd’s third poetry collection, Dog and Moon, was published by Oskana Poetry & Poetics (URegina Press) in spring 2025. His second collection, Insomnia Bird (Thistledown, 2018) won the 2019 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. Kelly has written eight chapbooks, most recently Sleep Is a Deep Pool (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2023), and he is a poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter. Originally from Smithers, BC, Kelly lives on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, and teaches in the English & Communications Department at NAIT. 

Ryan James Summers, aka ‘Some-Sum’, is an Indigenous songwriter/storyteller, spoken word poet, freestyle performance artist & emcee from Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.). 

‘Sum’ started writing at the age of 16 & began to freestyle whilst living on the streets of Edmonton at age 17. His submersion into hip-hop culture built the foundation of his ability to cypher; write poetry & experiment with lyricism. This enthusiastic devotion for ‘word smithing’ as an art form, has cultivated an adept ability to express with purpose, passion & power for intentional, conscious, culturally informed performances. His work covers anti-colonialism, Indigenous spirituality, the relationship between self & the world around us. Whilst making sure he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Tzadeka (TZA-deka) is Maigan van der Giessen, an Edmonton based emcee who has been pushing the boundaries of music since putting out her first tracks with hip hop collective Eshod ibn Wyza (2003). Maigan’s spicy vocals and intricate rhymes blend with long-time producer Marek Czuba’s masterful beat-making to create music that is distinct and fresh; with hints of jazz, punk, politics and the blues!

Accompanied by the wildly talented Murder Hornettes (Allison Ochoa and Kirsten Elliot), this unstoppable trio is burning up stages across the prairies with their harmonies and hot sauce!

For more information:

Website: tzadeka.com

Instagram: @tzadekavision

Facebook: REALTZADEKA

Nermeen Youssef is a multilingual poet documenting life through the lens of an expatriate scientist. Based in Edmonton, Nermeen’s work speaks to the multitudes of spaces and identities that she embodies every day, giving voice to the power and breadth of her work as an artist.

Bänoo Zan is a poet, translator, essayist, and poetry curator, with numerous published pieces and three books. Songs of Exile was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Letters to My Father was published in 2017. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012). Shab-e She’r bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo calls herself a war correspondent in verse. Others describe her as a political, metaphysical, and spiritual poet.

You can learn more about her through:
LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram