2012 Headliners

Douglas Barbour is Professor emeritus, Department of English & Film Studies, University of Alberta. His books include Visible Visions: The Selected Poems of Douglas Barbour (NeWest Press; winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award); Story for a Saskatchewan Night (rdc press);  Fragmenting Body etc (NeWest Press), Breath Takes (Wolsac & Wynn),  Continuations & Continuations 2 (University of Alberta Press); the critical texts, Michael Ondaatje (Twayne Publishers); Lyric / Anti-lyric: essays on contemporary poetry (NeWest Press). The University of Alberta Press has just published his latest book of poems, Listen. If in Spring 2017. He was inducted into the Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in 2003. Eclectic Ruckus is his review blog: https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs grew up near London’s Heathrow Airport. A youthful aptitude for sums and symbolic manipulation caused him to embark on a mathematical career, first in the aircraft industry and then in higher education and research. He retired from full-time academic life in 2008 and is now Reader Emeritus in Computational Mathematics at the University of Hertfordshire.

He began writing poetry in the late 1980’s and his work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. His first chapbook, Anglicized by Common Use, appeared in 1998 and was followed by Inklings of Complicity (2003) and Uneasy Relations (2007) in which the two halves of his brain cooperate to produce poems which link mathematical ideas with subjects as diverse as hill-walking, portfolio theory, sexual politics and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

His first full collection Tell it Like it Might Be (2008) searches for “what really happened” behind familiar stories such as lovers’ protestations, government statements or the Christian gospels. His latest book is Tradesman’s Exit (2009) which mixes elegy with personal recollection to test the links between who we are, what we do and how we might be remembered. His next book, due from Shoestring Press in summer 2013, is a narrative sequence set in the world of aviation in the 1920s and 30s. He is also working on an “evolution myth” based on paintings by the Australian artist David Walsh.

Although he is still involved in mathematical research, he now spends most of his time writing, reviewing and editing. He is poetry editor of the on-line magazine London Grip and, with his wife, the poet Nancy Mattson, he helps to run the Poetry in the Crypt reading series at St Mary’s Church in Islington.

For more information, see http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/:http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

Dionne Brand is a multi-award-winning poet, essayist, and novelist. Her ten volumes of poetry include Land to Light On, winner of the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Book Award; thirsty, winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, the Toronto Book Award, and the Griffin Poetry Prize; Inventory, a finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Governor General’s Award; and, most recently, Ossuaries. Her most recent novel, What We All Long For, was published to great acclaim in Canada and Italy in 2005, and won the Toronto Book Award.

In 2006, Brand was awarded the prestigious Harbourfront Festival Prize for her contribution to the world of books and writing, and, in 2009, she was named Toronto’s Poet Laureate. In addition to her literary accomplishments, Brand is Professor of English in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. She lives in Toronto.

Kathleen is completing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. She works on the 85 Project (www.85bawu.com) with Robert Majzels, Claire Huot and Nathan Tremblay; and is Writer in Residence at CE3C (Creative Environment for Emerging Electronic Culture) at ACAD. Recent collaborations include The Mapping Issue (Dandelion) with Oana Avasilichioaei and performance/MACHINE (Dandelion) with Michael Nardone (www.the37series.ca). She has an MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick.

At 20 years old Lyra Brown has launched herself into the world of music in stellar fashion. To date, she has opened for Emily Haines of Metric fame, at the request the artist, at the prestigious Phoenix Club in Toronto. Brown has performed on a CBC TV special, played the Edmonton, Canmore and Calgary Folk Fests, won the Calgary Folk Fest Song Writing Competition in the youth category and has recorded over 80 songs on her 4-track in her bedroom.

With the heart of a poet, the spirit if a painter, the eye of a photographer, the voice of an angel and a deceptive persona, Lyra Brown a consummate artist.

Diane is a poet and an essayist from Edmonton. She has written three collections of poetry. Her second book, Between the Silences was short-listed for the Acorn-Plantos award for peoples’ poetry. Her most recent book, Unruly Angels,was published by Frontenac House in 2011.

More at http://frontenachouse.com/blog/book_authors/diane/

Jenna Butler is the author of three books of poetry and ten short collections with small presses. Butler teaches creative writing and eco-criticism at Red Deer College. In the summer, she and her husband live on a small organic farm near the historic Grizzly Trail in Alberta’s north country.

With a style rooted in live performance, collaboration, radical innovation, and formal hybridity, Jeff Carpenter has participated in Edmonton’s diverse and thriving literary and performing arts culture for ten years. In addition to a growing number of juvenilia and ephemera, he is author of the chapbook malachi on foot (Red Nettle Press, 2008); and, with glenN robsoN, as the sound poetry duo Tonguebath, he authored and performed Dun John & Dr Agon (Extra Virgin Press, 2010).

He is currently writing a book of fractal origami titled Narrative Luck, thanks to the Edmonton Arts Council’s generous support. Carpenter is acting Acting Director of the Alberta Research Group (ARG), an award-winning “pataphysical think tank” (noth.ca).

Ify is a Nigerian-born, Calgary-raised, Toronto-based based spoken word artist. Since entering the world of spoken word, Ify has graced many microphones across the country at notable events such as Ladies First: National Women’s Day Celebration (Calgary), Oral Tradition: Story telling and testimony (Edmonton), Roc The Runway Black History Month Celebration (Calgary), and more. In 2010 Ify competed with the inaugural Edmonton slam team at the National Festival of Spoken Word, finishing 5th in the country. Since moving to Toronto in 2011, Ify has continued her professional and creative journey, sharing her message, stories, and poems, one mic at a time.

Greg is a sound artist with a special interest in algorithmic music. He has received a scholarship from Emmedia to create generative music based on sensory input from nature. His installation entitled “Farming Ordinary Wind Chimes” (3 networked computers that improvise a micro-tonal sound-scape, which is an experiment in inducing brain waves through bin-aural beating) was displayed at the Dartington College of Art in England. His work has been curated at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary, Canada; live international, streaming, co-locative performances in Den Haag, Berlin, Reykjavik, and Lodz; and controlled generative iphone algorithms in Penryn, England. His sound work and been featured on the BBC (tom ravenscroft) and appears on several labels including Enigmatic (Australia).

Dymphny is a writer, editor, mediator and mother. She is passionate about the magic of story and has woven words for money (journalism, corporate writing) and for love (poetry, fiction, drama, mystery novels) for over 25 years. Her first volume of poetry Contrary Infatuations (Frontenac House, Quartet 2007) was short listed for two prestigious awards in 2008. She is also the author of the memoir Bibi – A Life in Clay (Prairie Art Gallery, 2009).

With Edmonton poet Angela Kublik, she is the co-publisher of House of Blue Skies, and co-editor of the bestselling anthologies Writing the Land – Alberta Through its Poets (2008) and Home and Away – Alberta Poets Muse on the Meaning of Home (2010). More information at www.frontenachouse.com (click on authors) www.blueskiespoetry.ca www.poets.ca .

Dymphny will host A Balanced Brunch and appear in I eat my poems with honey

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. 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 will be published by Brick Books in 2024.

Trisia Eddy Woods (she/her) grew up exploring Alberta and Manitoba on horseback. Her artwork has been exhibited both close to home and internationally, and is held in the special collection of the Herron Art Library. A former editor for Red Nettle Press, Trisia’s writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals and chapbooks across North America, including Contemporary Verse 2, The Garneau Review, and New American Writing. She currently lives in Edmonton / amiskwaciywâskahikan with her family, which includes an array of four-legged companions. A Road Map for Finding Wild Horses is her first full-length collection.

Follow on IG: @prairiedarkroom 

For more info check out their website(s):
www.rednettlepress.com and https://prairiedarkroom.com/

Jannie Edwards writes from her chosen city of Edmonton amiskwacîwâskahikan (ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ). An Emeritus of MacEwan University, she has published three collections of poetry and has collaborated on many multidisciplinary artistic projects and literary mentorships. Most recently, Learning Their Names: Letters from the Home Place (Collusion Books, 2022), a decade-long “slow art” collaboration with visual artist Sydney Lancaster, explores their connection with a beloved five-acre homestead near the historic Victoria Trail in northeastern Alberta. During a year of the pandemic, Sydney and Jannie exchanged poetic letters across the country (Jannie in Edmonton, Sydney in Nova Scotia) that deepened their thinking about history, stewardship, responsibility and the aliveness of every living thing.

Originaire de Sainte-Geneviève au Manitoba, et maintenant basé en Alberta, Raphaël est un jeune artiste qui émerge depuis quelques années sur les scènes francophones. Musicien habile au piano comme à la guitare, il a développé son propre style pop-rock indie fin feutré, ornés de cuivres, et sa voix aux subtilités Brit-Rock est intrigante. En 2011 il a lancé son premier album Le monde à voir, qui a remporter le prix de l’enregistrement francophone de l’année au Western Canadian Music Awards. Son talent est aussi distingué par le prix RGE-Acadie au Contact Ouest.

Grand voyageur mondial, depuis ses débuts en 2007 il a ouvert le spectacle de Michel Rivard, a fait une tournée pan-canadienne avec la Francoforce, il a représenté l’Alberta au Mexique au Rostros de la Francofonia ainsi qu’au prestigieux Festival de Mexico et en fin la tournée du Grand 8 au Québec et en France.

Originally from Manitoba, and now based in Alberta, Raphaël is part of a young generation of Western Canadian artists who, over the past few years, have been emerging onto the Francophone scene. Raphaël’s first album, Le monde à voir, has recently won the Western Canadian Music Award for Best Francophone Recording.

Raphaël has travelled throughout Canada and the World. In Mexico City he represented Alberta at the Rostros de la francophonia and the prestigious Festival de Mexico. He played with Les Rencontres qui chantent at the Vue sur la relève festival in Montreal, and he participated in Le Grand 8, which toured in Quebec and in France.

Nora Gould writes from east central Alberta where she ranches with her family. She graduated from the University of Guelph in 1984 with a degree in veterinary medicine. Her debut poetry collection, I See My Love More Clearly From a Distance (Brick Books, 2012), was winner of the 2013 Robert Kroetsch Edmonton Book Prize and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (Writers Guild of Alberta); it was also shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was a finalist in the Poetry category for the High Plains Book Awards. Selah is her second poetry collection.

Jonathan has lived in Canada, the United States, Britain and France, where he has taught or held visiting appointments at Toronto, Alberta, Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Durham, the Sorbonne-Nouvelle and elsewhere. His poems have appeared in literary journals like Harvard Review, Grain, New Delta Review, Quarry and Mattoid. His books of poetry include Breath and Dust, Dream China, Dream Salvage, Dreamwork, and Musing. More about Jonathan.

Photo by: Manijeh Mannani.

Bob Holman, founder and artistic director of the Bowery Poetry Club, is a poet most often connected with spoken word, performance, hip-hop and slam. He has published thirteen books of poetry and released two CDs, most recently A Couple of Ways of Doing Something. He founded the spoken word label Mouth Almighty/Mercury, produced the award-winning PBS series The United States of Poetry and is currently working on three Endangered Language Projects: the Endangered Canto, under the auspices of City Lore, a 100-line poem with each line from a different endangered tongue; and “On the Road with Bob Holman,” a series of half-hour documentaries with Holman as host. The National Endowment for the Humanities has just announced major funding for a PBS special, “Word Up!” which Holman will host – shooting starts in Wales this August.

More about Bob Holman →

Born in Taber, Alberta, Sally Ito grew up in the Edmonton area. After university in BC and grad studies in Japan, she returned to Edmonton and lived here for another decade, completing her MA at the U of A, and publishing three books: Frogs in the Rain Barrel (1995), Season of Mercy (1999), and Floating Shore (1998) – a collection of short stories.

Today, she is a writer, editor, and translator living in Winnipeg with her husband and two children. She is also a Creative Writing instructor and a blog contributor to a children’s multicultural literary blog.

To express a deep abiding love for things ‘visible and invisible’ is what she aspires to in writing her poetry. She is launching Alert to Glory, her third book of poetry, which continues with the unveiling of a spiritual consciousness begun in Season of Mercy. The book explores the wonders of the created, material world; the disposition of the soul towards the divine, and lastly, the realms of motherhood and parenting. More at http://www.writersunion.ca/ww_profile.asp?mem=536&L==

Alexis Kienlen is a poet, journalist and novelist who lives on Treaty 6, Edmonton. She currently works as an agricultural journalist with Alberta Farmer newspaper. She is the author of 2 books of poetry, She dreams in Red and 13, and has also written a biography about a Sikh civil rights activist. Her first novel, Mad Cow, was released in April 2020, during the global pandemic.

Jason est, encore et toujours, un musicien très actif sur la scène albertaine et ce, depuis déjà une vingtaine d’années. Il se produit régulièrement avec une foule d’individus et de groupes musicaux dont « Allez Ouest, Captain Tractor, et Le Fuzz » ainsi qu’avec un nombre considérable d’anciens membres de groupes musicaux qui, pour une raison ou pour une autre, ont délaissé leurs chemins.
Ayant plusieurs cordes à son arc, il s’est trouvé un créneau comme accordéoniste, directeur musical, et concepteur musical. Le lancement de son premier disque solo, « A Blessed Curse », le propulse fermement dans son cheminement de musiciens aux nombreux talents. Suivez son parcours sur myspace.com/jasonkodiemusic.

Jason Kodie has been a consummate musician for the past 20 years and he is very active on the Alberta music scene. He performs regularly with a great many individuals, some from disbanded groups, and musical groups such as: Allez Ouest, Captain Tractor, and Le Fuzz. This multi-talented artist has found his niche as an accordionist and also as a music director and music conceptualist.

The recent release of his first solo CD entitled A Blessed Curse has solidly launched his musical career and establishes him as a musician with many talents. Follow his journey on myspace.com/jasonkodiemusic.

Sydney Lancaster is an Edmonton-based visual artist & writer. Her mixed media assemblages, drawings, photographs, and sculptures examine our sense of place and belonging (or lack thereof). Lancaster has exhibited in solo and group shows in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and St. Albert, and curated CORTEX: a multidisciplinary event for the EPF in 2006 & 2007.

Her recent projects include: the collaborative multi-media and chapbook project Archives of Absence (with poet Catherine Owen) launched at EPF 2011; Make:Believe – a sculptural installation & EGG – a sculpture-based ritual/performance (with poet Jannie Edwards); and new work for Lost and Found, exhibited December 2011 – January 2012 at the Art Gallery of St. Albert. She is the 2012 Artist in Residence at Harcourt House artist-run centre, and will exhibit NEST there in October 2012. More at www.sydneylancaster.com.

Photo by Marian Switzer.

Barbara Langhorst was born and educated in Edmonton, Alberta. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Alberta and teaches at St. Peter’s College, SK, where she has had the pleasure of meeting many of Canada’s finest writers.

Barbara has studied poetry for more than twenty years. Her love of the medium and her particular interest in experimental and avant-garde poetry drew her to become a writer.

In Restless White Fields, Barbara revisits the past and her parents’ violent murder-suicide with startling, unforgettable imagery that rends even as it heals. Her work is unexpected and impossible to ignore.

She and her husband, now empty nesters, share their acreage with a society of pets and the local wildlife. Restless White Fields is her first book of poetry.

More at http://www.stpeterscollege.ca/faculty/members/Barb-Langhorst.php and http://www.newestpress.com/catalog/virtuemart/17613.html

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.

John Lent has been publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction nationally and internationally for the past thirty years. His work has appeared in various issues of: The Malahat Review, Event, West Coast Line, NeWest Review, Grain, Prairie Fire, CV2, The New Quarterly, This Magazine, The Canadian Forum, Matrix, Waves, Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review. He has published eight books of poetry and fiction and a book of conversations with Robert Kroetsch about the writing life, called Abundance. His last novel, So It Won’t Go Away, was short-listed for the BC Book Prizes in 2005, and Thistledown Press released a volume of Lent’s poems called Cantilevered Songs in 2009 that was long-listed for the Re-Lit Award that year. A novel called The Path To Ardroe will be released by Thistledown Press in the spring of 2012.

John Lent has read his from his work in France, England and the USA, and has given Canada Council Readings of his work across Canada over the past twenty-five years, most recently in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary and Victoria. Lent has taught Creative Writing & Literature at various institutions in this country for the past forty years, and has, most recently, taught at The Sage Hill Writing Experience and The Victoria School of Writing. He has been writer in residence at Red Deer College and a resident writer at The Wallace Stegner House and The Leighton Artists Colony at The Banff Centre For The Arts. His most recent novel, The Path To Ardroe, is a novel that has taken over a decade to write and surfaces from experiences Lent had living in Strasbourg, France, in 1988, and Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1995.

Lent lives in Vernon, BC, with his wife, the artist Jude Clarke, and plays in The Lent/Fraser/Wall Trio, a jazz and roots group. He is one of the founders of Kalamalka Press and The Kalamalka Institute For Working Writers, and though he has taught Creative Writing and Literature classes for years, and served as the Regional Dean, North Okanagan, for Okanagan College, for the past five years, John Lent is currently, and happily, retired.

Mike Lent is renowned as a “top-drawer bassist” and one of Canada’s leading musicians. He has played professionally for over 25 years, and has a reputation as a masterful performer in a variety of disciplines; from touring with jazz greats like Lee Konitz and Sheila Jordan, to recording with k.d. lang and Jann Arden. When not on tour or on stage, Michael runs his own Edmonton studio, 10th street studios, producing for local artists.

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.

Kath MacLean is a multi media artist and educator living in Edmonton. She writes poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, critical reviews, performance poetry, drama & film and has performed her work throughout Canada and the United States. The most unusual and challenging location, however, remains an old WWII bomb shelter on a mountainside in Slovakia she visited as a guest of the Katherine Mansfield Society in the spring of 2012.

Her most recent work is Kat Among the Tigers (2011), poetry based on the journals & correspondence of Katherine Mansfield, & its accompanying poetryvideo, Doo-Da-Doo-Da, which won her the “Best of Fest” at its first national & international screening. Inspired by the writing of Robert Kroetsch, MacLean’s poetry was short-listed for the Robert Kroetsch Innovative Poetry Award in 2012, the same year she received the inaugural Anne Green Award for her excellence & innovation in film, poetry, & performance. Last winter she was WIR at the Mackie House for Kalamalka Press, and this year she has been awarded a writer in residency at the Al Purdy House in Ontario.

This summer MacLean debuted her new videopoem, The Language of Desire, from her earlier CD of performance poetry, Seed Bone and Hammer (2009) at Visible Verse in Vancouver. In the fall, she shared excerpts from her new manuscript in progress, When Night Comes Riding, a book of creative nonfiction, about the arrival of Spanish flu in Edmonton and Toronto in 1918. A who done it, MacLean explores the myth of Edmonton’s urban legend, Miss Felicia Graham, Westmount Junior High’s infamous ghost. Was Felicia murdered by Bluebeard, a serial killer living close by, or did she take her own life and jump from the bridge? You’ll want to know, but you’ll have to wait.

MacLean’s latest work in progress takes her again back in time to both New England and to Europe during WWI and WWI as Modernist poet, H.D. recalls her memories of Imagism, her relationship with Pound, and her fears about the wars during her new and experimental psychoanalytical sessions with Freud in Vienna during the early 1930s.

Plagued in recent months by ill health, MacLean has had to learned to walk and to breathe again and hopes now the worst of it is over and she can turn her energies again to writing. Keep your fingers crossed. Kathmaclean.com.

Heather Simeney MacLeod grew up throughout various regions of British Columbia, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. A few years ago Heather returned to Canada from Scotland, and she is currently a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Her dissertation is in contemporary American film and fiction. Heather’s creative nonfiction piece, To Discover the Various Uses of Things was a finalist in the 2011 CBC Literary Competition and went on to win the Malahat Creative Nonfiction prize. She recently published two collections of poetry, The Little Yellow House (McGill University Press) and Intermission (Muses Press). She is a member of the Metis Nation British Columbia.

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.

Nancy Mattson moved from Edmonton, Alberta, to London, England, in 1990. She has published three full poetry collections, one in Canada and two in England. Her first, Maria Breaks Her Silence (Coteau, 1989), based on the life of a 19th century Finnish woman immigrant to Canada, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award and adapted by Alison Wells for the Edmonton Fringe Festival as Lye Soap and Dancing Cows.

Her second collection is +Writing with Mercury (Flambard, 2006) and she is one of five poets chosen for Take Five 06 (Shoestring, 2006). Her poems in these two volumes are set in contemporary England, Canada, Finland and Italy and use memory, myth, history and family stories to create a rich linguistic and cultural texture.

Nancy’s latest collection is Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press, 2012). It begins with poems about some Russian women artists of the avant-garde but returns to the theme of family history, inspired by letters sent by her great-aunt Lisi from Soviet Karelia in the 1930s. The letters themselves have also been published in a pamphlet, Lines from Karelia (Arrowhead, 2011). Some of the poems from Finns and Amazons were drafted during a fellowship at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland in June 2007.

Nancy has read her poetry at venues, festivals and universities in Canada, the US, the UK, Finland, Russia and New Zealand. She is married to poet and mathematician Michael Bartholomew-Biggs and together they organise the popular Poetry in the Crypt reading series at St Mary Islington in north London.

For more information, see http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/nancymattsonpoems.html

Brendan McLeod is a writer and musician based out of Vancouver. His first novel, The Convictions of Leonard McKinley, was longlisted for the 2008 Re:Lit Award for fiction. His first play, The Big Oops, recently premiered as part of his curatorship in residence at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. His music group The Fugitives was nominated for a 2007 Canadian Folk Music Award. As a poet and oral storyteller, he has performed over 400 shows in the past 5 years. He is a former Canadian SLAM poetry champion and World SLAM runner-up. He teaches spoken word at Langara College.

www.brendanmcleod.ca
www.fugitives.ca

Jérôme Melançon habite Camrose avec son épouse, ses deux enfants et son chat. Il y est arrivé par la Saskatchewan, la France, l’Ontario, le Québec, et le Nouveau-Brunswick. Il enseigne la philosophie, la politique canadienne, autochtone, et chinoise, ainsi que, parfois, la sociologie et la création littéraire, au campus Augustana de l’Université de l’Alberta. Il est l’auteur de deux recueils de poésie, De perdre tes pas (2011) et Quelques pas quelque part (tous deux aux éditions des Plaines), de nombreux brouillons, et d’un projet de poésie bilingue semi-continuel sur Twitter. Il a aussi publié des articles académiques sur la démocratie, la dissidence, et l’anticolonialisme; sur le rôle des intellectuels et sur la culture; sur la musique de Radiohead, Pink Floyd, et Tarmac; et sur la littérature.

Jérôme Melançon lives in Camrose with his wife, their two children and their cat. He arrived there through Saskatchewan, France, Ontario, Québec, and New-Brunswick. He teaches philosophy, as well as Canadian, Indigenous, and Chiense politics, and sometimes even sociology and creative writing, at the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta. He is the author of two books of poetry, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (both with Éditions des Plaines), many drafts, and a semi-continuous bilingual poetry project on Twitter. He has also published academic articles on democracy, dissent, and anticolonialism; on the role of intellectuals and on culture; on the music of Radiohead, Pink Floyd, and Tarmac; and on literature.

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/

Originally from a farm in Saskatchewan, Gerry Morita graduated from Simon Fraser University’s dance program, and has since worked in Vancouver, Montreal, Tokyo and Edmonton as a dancer, choreographer, performance artist and teacher. Her body of work involves continuous inquiry into new ways of seeing movement, the body, and the spaces between us. She studies and teaches contact improvisation, Noguchi Taiso and other somatic-based techniques in order to find non-performative, natural ways of being in the body.

Recently, Gerry has focused on sound/movement connections in her work with Shawn Pinchbeck and Interactives at U of A. As Artistic Director of Edmonton-based Mile Zero Dance, (www.milezerodance.com) she has created a prolific body of work and collaborates widely, performing in various found locations as well as in theatres. She is currently completing an MFA in Theatre Practice at the University of Alberta under the tutelage of Lin Snelling, exploring the use of weight in dance.

Ben Murray is writer and musician whose volume of poetry, What We’re Left With, was published by Brindle & Glass. He’s a 2011 winner of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Prize (U.S), and recent fiction and poetry credits include Vallum, All Rights Reserved, Other Voices, Nether, and Bad Romance: An Anthology of Dysfunctional Desire (FF Press). His list poem Things To Do, originally published in The New Quarterly, was selected by McGraw-Hill for their inaugural iList curriculum for Canadian high schools. Ben was born in New Jersey, but won’t let you hold that against him.

Two time Gemini winner, Tom Radford’s career spans forty years in the Canadian television and film industries as a Writer, Director, and Producer. Born to a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper family that came to Alberta in 1905, Tom has carried on a tradition of portraying the distinctive character of the west and north to Canada and the world. His film I, Nuligak documented/recreated the writing of the first Inuit history of the north. Preservation of language was very important to the writer, Nuligak, and thus to the film.

When Codebreakers was named best Science and Adventure Documentary at the 2011 Geminis, it marked the tenth time Radford’s films have won national or international honours. He has won the Best Director prize at the Alberta Film Awards on eight separate occasions, most recently in 2011 for Tipping Point, The Age of the Oil Sands, he and Niobe Thompson’s two hour investigation into the environmental impact of the Athabasca oil sands. His films have won honours from the World Television Festival in Banff to San Francisco, Ohio, Yorkton, San Antonio, and Florence, leading to the Alberta Award of Excellence presented by Peter Lougheed.

The Raving Poets rocked Edmonton’s poetry scene for ten years, from 2001 to 2010. Their blend of spoken-word and live improv music carved great swaths of coolness into the E-Town poetry scene. They worked with all comers, staging a regular open-mic experience that was unique and unforgettable: anyone with a poem could be backed by this group of talented, passionate musicians (who also happen to be poets themselves). They’ve jammed with the likes of Sheri-D Wilson (her “dirty boys”), C.R. Avery, Stephen Scobie, and Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel. Now in semi-retirement, the Raving Poets Band dusts off the mics and amps for this special one-night-only engagement at the Edmonton Poetry Festival.

Pierrette Requier is a multi-faceted bilingual writer and translator. She is the recipient of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal 2022. Her recent triple publication—a translation / adaptation of details from the edge of the village, into French, entitled Petites nouvelles du Last Best West is available in book form, as an e-book, and audiobook. A collaboration between two western Canada publishing houses, Les Éditions de la nouvelle plume, Regina Saskatchewan and Frontenac House, Okotoks, Alberta.

Jem Rolls has never published anything. He believes performance poetry to be the most direct and dynamic medium full of as yet unrealised possibilities

Born in Surrey. Performer of 2700 shows, promoter of 750.

From 1993 he found himself ineluctably sucked into performing, doing 150 shows a year while learning fast on his feet and running Big Word. This now legendary weekly cabaret in North London ran under the tagline This is not books this is raw word, and featured many of that unparalleled generation of diverse performers.

From 1996 Jem ran the only successful poetry cabaret in Edinburgh in decades and in 2001 he moved there and set up a very successful fortnightly cabaret, while running Scotland’s first Poetry Slams.

In 2001 he did the Toronto fringe and nothing was ever the same again. Confronted by the possibilities and demands of the hour show, Jem gleefully exploded into the freedom of it. The Fringe circuit has very few rules and can provide the artists a complete liberation. Jem has been making a living creating a new hour show every year since 2003.

“By taking poetry out of the dour church halls and into the pubs and comedy circuit, Rolls and Govan kick-started an interest in poetry not seen since the days of Hugh MacDiarmid and Dylan Thomas.” Scotland On Sunday, 2003

“Jem Rolls wins again with brilliant funny angry poetry … a remarkable performance poet … stronger angry stuff that pours out in a torrent of words … his word wizardry is tasty enough to be bottled and sold … clever and hilarious… smart and infectious” Edmonton Journal

“The love child of Eminem and John Cleese” Montreal Hour

Anna Marie Sewell is a multi-genre author and former Poet Laureate, a founding member of the Stroll of Poets, and  involved with various collaborators in pursuit of beauty, meaningful exchange and reverent foolishness. Her latest novel, Urbane, is a finalist for the City of Edmonton Book Prize. A member of Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation, also of Anishinaabe and Polish heritage, she lives in Edmonton and works globally.

For more info check out their website:
prairiepomes.com.

John is the author of five books of poetry, including Lookout, The Grey Islands, and That Night We were Ravenous. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the Commonwealth First Novel Award.

John’s poetry awards include the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Newfoundland and Labrador Poetry Prize. Lookout was shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Prize. His interest in landscape and its impact on human lives stems from his decision in 1975 to move from Ontario to Newfoundland. From 2006 to 2008 he was the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada.

Josée est autrice, metteuse en scène et comédienne. Basée à Edmonton depuis 25 ans, elle écrit pour le théâtre, le cinéma, la télé, la radio et les podcasts, et pour le collectif d’humour Le RiRe. Depuis quelques années, elle développe de nouvelles voix narratives grâce à ses nombreux alter ego (La petite Lulu, Old Lu, Djozy, Ann Jo) avec lesquels elle livre sur scène de la poésie spoken word, des monologues et des chansons. Josée vient tout juste de présenter son nouveau spectacle solo, La fille du facteur, sur la scène de l’UniThéâtre. Dans un univers où l’humour est poétique et la prose polémique, Josée tire la langue aux conventions en faisant exploser sa langue maternelle. Elle a le courage de donner sa langue au chat, mais, jamais, elle n’a la langue dans sa poche.

Josée writes, performs and directs. Based in Edmonton, Alberta, she writes for theatre, film, tv, radio and podcasts, as well as for the comedy troupe Le RiRe. In the last decade, she has developed new narrative voices with her many alter egos (La petite Lulu, Old Lu, Djozy, Ann Jo) creating and performing spoken word poetry, monologues and songs. Her new show, La fille du facteur, was presented at L’UniThéâtre in March 2019. Just like La petite Lulu tire la langue, Josée always sticks her tongue out, creating a tongue-in-cheek world where the French language plays tongue twisting games with l’anglais.

Jocelyne Verret is a long-time member of the Stroll of Poets and a past President. She is a published poet, novelist, dramaturge, and essayist. The Works Art and Design Festival of 2017 featured twelve of her poems (French and English) with accompanying artwork by visual artist Father Douglas.

Jocelyne Verret est un membre de longue date de la Stroll of Poets d’Edmonton et une ancienne présidente. Plusieurs oeuvres de cette poétesse, romancière, dramaturge et essayiste ont été publiées. The Works Art and Design Festival de 2017 a présenté douze de ses poèmes (en français et en anglais) avec les toiles accompagnatrices réalisées par le peintre Father Douglas.

Gisèle Villeneuve is a Calgary-based bilingual writer working in multiple genres. As a novelist, short story writer, poet, and translator, she delights in alternating freely between French and English. Rising Abruptly, a collection of stories in English that are a distillation of her mountain experiences, won the Fiction & Poetry Award at the international Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and the Alberta Book Publishing Awards, Trade Fiction category. Her other works include the bilingual novel Visiting Elizabeth; a writer’s notebook in French, nue et crue lettre au poète disparu, in which poetry, prose, fiction and non-fiction share the page; and Outsiders, a collection of stories in French. Gisèle has also worked as voice coach, narrator, editor, radio journalist and documentarian, scriptwriter, TV researcher, magazine writer and playwright. Originally from Montréal, she has resided in England and the United States and has travelled five continents. When not at her desk, she can be found roaming the Rockies.

Auteure bilingue de Calgary, Gisèle Villeneuve pratique plusieurs genres littéraires. Romancière, nouvellière, poète et traductrice, elle prend grand plaisir à passer librement du français à l’anglais. Ses œuvres les plus récentes incluent Rising Abruptly, un recueil de nouvelles en anglais couronné de plusieurs prix et dont les textes s’appuient sur son expérience en montagne; nue et crue lettre au poète disparu, un carnet d’écrivain dans lequel la prose et la poésie, la fiction et l’essai partagent la page; Outsiders, un recueil de nouvelles en français; et Visiting Elizabeth, un roman bi-langue. Gisèle fut également coach de voix, narratrice, rédactrice, journaliste et documentariste de radio, scénariste, recherchiste et dramaturge. Originaire de Montréal, elle a habité en Angleterre et aux Etats-Unis et elle a voyagé sur cinq continents. Entre ses travaux d’écriture, elle va souvent prendre l’air dans les Rocheuses.