2010 Headliners

Nuala: a fable is Kimmy Beach’s sixth book. Her second, Alarum Within: theatre poems (Turnstone Press, 2003), has been adapted twice as a stage play. The Last Temptation of Bond (UAP, 2013) was featured on CBC’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers, and was chosen as one of the top five books of the year at Quill & Quire’s Readers’ Poll. Kimmy has served as a mentor, teacher, workshop facilitator, and writer-in-residence for over a dozen provincial and national writing organizations and schools. She is currently writing a novel about 1970s romance comics and the music of Tom Jones. Kimmy lives in a creaky old house in Red Deer, Alberta, with Stu, her husband of thirty years.

Author of four books of poetry (most recently the visual poem suite chains) and two volumes of conceptual fiction (most recently the short fiction collection How to Write), derek beaulieu’s work is consistently praised as some of the most radical and challenging contemporary Canadian writing.

Publisher of the acclaimed smallpresses housepress (1997-2004) and no press (2005-present), and past editor of several small magazines, beaulieu has spoken and written on poetics internationally. Toro magazine recently wrote “using techniques drawn from graphic design, fine art and experimental writing, [beaulieu] vigorously tests the restrictions, conventions, and denotations of the letters of the alphabet.”

Website: On Wikipedia

derek will be part of See Me/Hear This.

George Bowering, Canada’s first Poet Laureate, was born in the Okanagan Valley.

After serving as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Bowering earned a BA in English and an MA in History at the University of British Columbia, where he became one of the co-founders of the avant-garde poetry magazine TISH. He has taught literature at the University of Calgary, the University of Western Ontario and Simon Fraser University, and he continues to act as a Canadian literary ambassador at international conferences and readings.

A distinguished novelist, poet, editor, professor, historian and tireless supporter of fellow writers, Bowering has authored more than eighty books, including works of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography and youth fiction. His writing has also been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese and Romanian. In 2002, Bowering was recognized by the Vancouver Sun as one of the most influential people in British Columbia.

George appears in Book Chat and the Talonbooks Launch Party.

Su Croll’s first book, Worlda Mirth (Kalamalka Press), was the winner of the Kalamalka New Writers Competition and was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her second, Blood Mother (Signature Editions), was short-listed for both Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson award and the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award.

Su Croll lives in Edmonton with her husband and children where she teaches ESL at an Immigrant Settlement Agency. She is currently working on a novel.

Su appears in Girl’s Night Out.

Ian Ferrier is an internationally known poet, musician and performer who has released two CDs and a CD/book, founded a festival, and started an online magazine and a record label. A recipient of multiple arts awards, he currently tours the country with his spoken word and dance collaboration For Body and Light (http://forbodyandlight.org).

Helene Garrett’s work of translation is at once exotic and familial. Her scholarly journey, took her to an MA in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies and to the “ABC’s” as they are popularly known, the small islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, and a Creole spoken there. She came across the work of Curacao writer, sculptor and artist Elis Juliana, who blends the intrinsic rhythmic and tonal aspects of the Papiamentu language with the traditional form of Japanese haiku.

Helene’s translation of Juliana’s work, Haiku in Papiamentu, won honorable mention in the 2004 John Glassco Prize (Literary Translators’ Association of Canada). She showcases and celebrates the richness of Papiamentu culture, which merges African roots with Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch colonial traditions.

Helene appears in Found in Translation: A Sharing.

Lorri Neilsen Glenn is a poet and nonfiction writer. She is the author of four poetry collections including Lost Gospels (Brick, 2010) and author/editor of six academic books. Currently she is editing a collection of poetry and prose about mothers of the 1950s and finishing a manuscript of essays on grief and loss. Lorri was Halifax Regional Municipality’s Poet Laureate for 2005-2009.

Raised on the prairies, Lorri has lived in Halifax since 1983 and now divides her time between Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. She is Professor of Literacy and Literacy Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, has been author in residence at St. Peter’s College in Saskatchewan, and scholar-in-residence at three universities in Australia and New Zealand and at the University of Saskatchewan. She has taught writing in over 50 organizations across Canada, organized and led writing retreats in Ireland and Australia, and currently leads workshops in poetry and life writing (memoir) locally and nationally.

Lorri appears in Poetry in Spirit.

Ariel is the Winnipeg-based author of two recent small press poetry chapbooks, including Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 with Edmonton’s Rubicon Press. She is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press’ books section and, each September, is Blogger-in-Chief of HOT AIR, the official blog of THIN AIR (i.e. the Winnipeg International Writers Festival). Her first full collection of poetry, Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010), will be launched at the Edmonton Poetry Festival.

Website: Blogger.com Profile

Ariel will appear at Girls Night Out at Audreys Books on Tuesday night.

Writer, Student, Research Assistant, Artist, Impresario, Agnostic Christian Anarchist Marxist Humanist, Edmontonian, Somnambulist, Life-Amateur, hopefully one of the good guys.

Tracy is a mother, a university student currently finishing a MA in English with a creative option at the U of R, a part time barber/stylist, and the coordinator for the SWG Writers/Artists Colony. She recently founded the Vertigo Reading Series. Born in Regina, she currently lives there.

Her first poetry collection, This is Not Eden, was published in 2005 and her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Grain, Spring, A Room of One’s Own and Event, as well as numerous anthologies. Her manuscript of poetry on Egon Schiele was short listed for the 2007 CBC Literary Awards.

Website: Tracy on Authors Aloud

Tracy will appear at Girls Night Out at Audreys Books on Tuesday night.

Robert Heidbreder was born on the wet, muddy banks of the Mississippi River in 1947 and in 1970 he moved to the wet, misty skies of Vancouver B.C. to pursue his degree in Classical Languages.

In 1975 he became a Canadian citizen and he completed his teaching degree at University of British Columbia. Soon after he started teaching primary children in Vancouver, he began writing because he wanted the children in his class introduced to a liveliness of language that matched their natural bounce, energy, imagination and playfulness.

His first book, Don’t Eat Spiders, was published in 1985 and his newest book

Mitch Holtby (Mitchmatic) is a different kind of rapper. Coming from a musical household with a music teacher for a mother and three siblings, all of whom are performing musicians as well, he has developed skills on many different instruments. Jazz is the genre of choice for the majority of his home life, so Mitch has grown accustomed to pure improvisation and carries that musical philosophy through his adventures with different style. The latest is hip-hop. Rapping/producing now serves as a perfect outlet for Mitch’s instinctive musicality.

Mitch appears in Hip Hop Heart. Beat.

Award-winning Poet Laureate Ahmed Ali, better known as Knowmadic, is a multi disciplinary artist, community organizer, public speaker and youth worker who has dedicated his time to enabling and empowering diverse communities around the world. Knowmadic is co-founder and current artistic director of Edmonton’s only spoken word collective: Breath In Poetry. He is passionate about the arts, education and emphasizes the importance of equitable representation on all levels of government.

Renowned poet, novelist, essayist, and teacher, Robert Kroetsch is one of Canada’s most accomplished authors. With a career spanning well over 40 years, Kroetsch has received numerous honours, including the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for his book The Studhorse Man. He has penned 9 internationally acclaimed novels, 14 books of poetry, and 5 books of non-fiction, essays, and exploration.

Celebrated as a leading creator of contemporary Canadian literature, his writing, teaching, and critical vision have helped shape Canadian literature and culture. His works have been translated, published, and studied extensively worldwide, and he has given readings in countries as various as China, Japan, Finland, Italy, and Australia. Kroetsch has taught and mentored countless writers throughout the world. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2000 for The Hornbooks of Rita K. His most recent award is the Manitoba Arts Council Arts Award of Distinction. Robert Kroetsch lives in Leduc, Alberta.

Website: Robert Kroetsch in the Canadian Encyclopedia

Robert appears in Literary Cocktails.

Kwazii is the festival’s youngest performer – age 16, but he already has years of rap to draw on. Kwazii has written songs over basically any type of music you could think of and variations on his flow over the years. He shows a knowledge of lyricism most young artists don’t have, and a humorous approach to life and its outcomes. In his free time he likes writing songs, working on his broad knowledge of words and their meanings and going to the studio to record his music.

Kwazii will be part of Hip-Hop Heart. Beat.

Jolanta Lapiak is an Ameslan (American Sign Language or ASL) literary and media artist, narrator, and poet in video, performance art, photography and text.

Her works challenge the phonocentric traditions of textuality and poetry. Her work explores artistic and literary elements in ASL, grammatology (art/science of writing) and various ways of writing/speaking with a unique blend of cinematic vocabulary, lingual choreography, verbal calligraphy, poetry, and storytelling techniques, using ASL. Her works are inspired by Japanese art (calligraphy, specifically).
Jolanta received a MFA in Media Arts from NSCAD University, Halifax, N.S., 2007, and a BFA in Media Arts & Digital Technologies from ACAD, Calgary, 2005. She also earned a BA from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. She teaches courses in the ASL/Deaf Studies and ASL interpretation programs in Edmonton, Canada.

Jolanta appears in See this/Hear Me. More information on her work is available at www.lapiak.com

Multi-genre writer Shelley A. Leedahl returns to her adopted city of Edmonton with her latest title: Wretched Beast (poetry, BuschekBooks). Her numerous critically well-received publications include The House of the Easily Amused, Orchestra of the Lost Steps, Talking Down the Northern Lights, the multi-award-winning children’s book The Bone Talker (illustrator Bill Slavin) and the juvenile novel Riding Planet Earth.

Leedahl frequent presents her work and leads writing workshops across Canada. She also works as a radio advertising copywriter for two Edmonton radio stations. Her poetry, essays and short stories are often anthologized, most recently in _Slice Me Some Truth: An Anthology of Canadian Creative Nonfiction (Wolsak & Wynn). Leedahl currently lives in Sechelt, BC. See the Writers Union of Canada website (www.writersunion.ca) for more information.

Shawna Lemay is the author of the recently released novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag which has made Harper’s Bazaar’s #THELIST (must-reads for Fall 2015), the “Most Anticipated” list on the popular Canadian book website, 49th Shelf, and has been selected for Maria Shriver’s fall reading club. Nathalie Atkinson has chosen Rumi and the Red Handbag for Fall’s Must-Read Fashion Books in the Globe and Mail.

She has also written six books of poetry, a book of essays, and an experimental novel titled, Hive, which is about the possibility of the existence of a woman art forger. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She has an M.A. in English from the University of Alberta. Her blog is titled Calm Things. Some of her photographs are available via Getty Images.

Laurie MacFayden is an award-winning writer, visual artist and former journalist who has lived in Edmonton since 1984. Her latest poetry collection, Walking Through Turquoise, explores love, desire, and other intimacies mined in her first two titles, White Shirt and Kissing Keeps Us Afloat. Her writing has appeared in The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Queering the Way and Alberta Views.

Nancy Mackenzie’s third book of poetry, Communion, was recently released, continuing the philosophical explorations of Soul’s Flight and The Illuminated Life, with a wink and a nod to her collaborative CD and anthology Eyeing the Magpie. Recent performances of the poems, with keyboard and mandolin, at venues as varied as the Amberlea Meadow Dressage Festival, Government House for Alberta Art’s Days, The Kasbar, last year’s Words and Wine event, and Ekstasis Edition’s Summer Solstice reading have brought audiences into the poet’s concern for stolen habitat, appreciation for ancestors and resonance with echoes / part eternal part pure now.

Alice Major founded the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2006 while she was serving as Edmonton’s first poet laureate. (She warns all future laureates to be careful what they start!). Alice has published 12 award-winning collections of poetry, including The Office Tower Tales (which won the Pat Lowther award) and Memory’s Daughter (which received the Stephan G. Stephansson Prize). Her recent book Welcome to the Anthropocene was nominated for three major awards. Her 12th collection is Knife on Snow, released by Turnstone Press in Spring 2023. Other awards include the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. Her website is here.

Lisa Martin is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Believing is not the Same as Being Saved (University of Alberta Press, 2017) and One crow sorrow (Brindle & Glass, 2008). Her latest chapbook, Typology (Anstruther Press, 2021), is a sonnet sequence in homage to the Myers-Briggs personality types.

Dr. Mason-John is an award winning writer who has done extensive work with schools on issues like bullying and violence as well as workshops on spoken-word poetry. She is the author of four non fiction books, one award winning novel, and a collection of poetry, prose and plays, as well as having several plays produced (including the acclaimed Brown Girl in the Ring at the Edmonton Fringe Festival.) She is also the editor of Great Black North, the first anthology of work by black Canadian poets published in more than three decades.

Mikey understands that his knotted rhymes and truthy narratives won’t make him happy with himself, no matter what kind of 8bit-slush-covered drummachine-idolatry he solders together behind them. He realizes that weeping on stage into a warming glass of cranberry juice isn’t exactly “funny” to everybody, even if his sisters laugh every time. He knows he’s been a little short with you lately, and he’s sorry. Things are just a tad stressful at school, and at the youth centre where he works. The kids call him names.

So you see, it all might just be attention-seeking behavior.

Mikey will be part of Hip-Hop Heart. Beat.

Don is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor and teacher. He has twice won the Governor General’s Award, for Night Field (1991) and Another Gravity (2000), and in June 2007 he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006).

He is the co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books, one of Canada’s leading poetry presses and is Associate Director for poetry at the Banff Centre for the Arts Writing Studio. Don is a careful, lyric observer of nature, and sees his writing as “nature poetry in a time of environmental crisis.” In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. Currently he lives in Newfoundland.

Don will appear in Book Chat and Findings: The Poetry Party.

The author of more than thirty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, publisher and literary impresario rob mclennan’s most recent titles include World’s End, and essays in the face of uncertainties. He lives in Ottawa.

Website: robmclennan.blogspot.com

As a Certified Translator (Canada), Yukari translates almost anything her clients need from official papers and web sites to literary pieces. When she has time, she enjoys reading and talking about translation because it is a field with both great depth and width. She also reads and writes whatever and whenever she feels like it. Words simply keep fascinating her. She is currently working with Alice Major on a project to translate the work of Japanese poet, Misuzu. Her web site is www.yukarimeldrum.com.

Yukari appears in Found in Translation: A Sharing.

Peter Midgley is the author of several books of poetry, children’s literature, and plays. He lives in Edmonton.

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

Omar Mouallem is a National Magazine Awards nominated writer and Metro News columnist, who moonlights as Edmonton rapper A.O.K. After four years as Avenue’s associate editor, he recently left to serve as the Edmonton Public Library’s Writer in Residence for 2013, its centennial year. He mentors writers and holds creative workshops, while working on stories that have appeared in enRoute, VICE, The Globe and Mail and Eighteen Bridges.

Considered by Dose Magazine to be “one of Canada’s most underrated hip-hop groups”, the Politic Live trio has been twice nominated for the Western Canadian Music Awards.

Fusing their West Indian roots with past and modern day hip-hop influences, Politic Live diversifies the genre of hip-hop. They can hold their own in a fight of wits amongst MCs, but their lyrics also show a social conscience reminiscent of Public Enemy.

Politic Live have opened for the likes of Nas, K-Os, and Saul Williams; have had videos on Much Music; been showcased at national and regional music industry events. They are also the producers, organizers, and hosts of Edmonton’s Hip-Hop For Hunger, an annual Christmas initiative that in 8 years has raised over 6,000 lbs of food for the Edmonton Food Bank.

At the Edmonton Poetry Festival they are taking part in Hip-Hop Heart. Beat. For more information: www.PoliticLive.com

Titilope Sonuga is a poet who renders, both in verse and performance, a quality of rootedness and unflinching womanhood that extends beyond the bounds of a single poem or poetic performance. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Down to Earth (2011), Abscess (2014), and This Is How We Disappear (2019) and has composed two spoken word albums, Mother Tongue (2011) and Swim (2019). Her work is expansive, reaching into the realm of theatre, television and advertising campaigns for global brands. She is the 9th Poet Laureate of the City of Edmonton.

“The Elvis and Costello of sound poetry…”

Daniel 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. His second book of poetry, The Mourner’s Book of Albums, is forthcoming from Tightrope Books. He teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto, Scarborough.

Website: http://danielscotttysdal.blogspot.com

Cadence Weapon (Roland Pemberton) – poet, musician, record producer, writer, and starting July 1, 2009, the City of Edmonton’s Poet Laureate. At 23, Roland Pemberton is an accomplished artist with an established international reputation as an innovative force in hip-hop. His debut album Breaking Kayfabe (2005) earned him nominations for the Canadian Indie Awards and “Best Rap Album of 2006” at the Plug Independent Music Awards, and won CBC Radio 3’s Bucky Award. Both Breaking Kayfabe and his sophomore album Afterparty Babies (2008) have earned nominations for the coveted Polaris Music Prize.

Website: http://www.epl.ca/poet/

Rollie appears in Hip Hop Heart. Beat.