2016 Headliners

Katherine is a student of English and Drama Education at the University of Alberta. She has been writing short stories and poetry since she learnt how to spell. Her work tends to reflect her personal experiences and relationships with people, places, teaching, familial bonds, and—more often than she’d like to admit—food.

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.

Sarah-Jeanne a grandi au Québec. Elle a commencé à s’illustrer en poésie en 2015 en remportant le premier prix du concours de poésie du Centre de littérature canadienne. Depuis, trois de ses poèmes ont été publiés. Sarah-Jeanne est une touche-à-tout littéraire : elle s’adonne également à l’écriture théâtrale et affectionne particulièrement le roman. Elle en est à sa troisième participation au French Twist.

Québec-born Sarah-Jeanne got into poetry in 2015, when she won the first place of the CLC’s poetry contest (French). Three of her poems have since been published. Sarah-Jeanne does not shy away from literary genres: she is starting playwriting and is particularly fond of novels. This is her third time attending the French Twist event.

Juliane Okot Bitek has never stopped exploring the power of narrative, focusing her passionate essays, poetry, and nonfiction work on political and social issues. Her work has been anthologized and published widely online, in print, and in literary magazines. Some of her writing can be found in West Coast Line and subTerrain or on Warscapes.com, African Writing Online, and zocalopoets.com.

Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001) – a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Poetry Prize. Bök is one of the founders of Conceptual Literature, and he is on the verge of finishing his current project, entitled The Xenotext – a work that requires him to engineer the genome of an unkillable bacterium so that the DNA of such an organism might become not only a durable archive that stores a poem for eternity, but also an operant machine that writes a poem in response. Bök teaches in the Department of English at the University of Calgary.

Isaac Bond is a community focused artist grown in the quiet prairie city of Saskatoon. Through hip-hop, spoken word, and an honest effort to be a genuine human being, Bond’s work presents audiences with immaculate abstractions, compassionate rhythms, and vulnerable imperfections. He looks forward to being in Edmonton where he hopes to bear his soul, open his heart, and chill out with family in all its forms. If you like what he has to say, be sure to say what’s up.

Weyman Chan’s second book, Noise From the Laundry, was a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Award for poetry and the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award. His fifth book of poetry, Human Tissue —-a primer for Not Knowing—- will be released in Spring, 2016. Parlaying the fraught language of techno-jargon and bio-speak, his latest book tries to re-frame the age-old question, “why are we here?” with reference to familial angst, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, and the ones left holding the bag in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Liam Coady’s work is special for its ability to foreground the human possibilities of social unity, personal resilience, love and enduring hopefulness. A member of the 2011 National Slam Champion Team and a 2-time finalist for the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam, Liam has performed and toured cross Canada and internationally.

Recipient of the 2015 League of Canadian Poets’ lifetime member award and the 2013 Manitoba Writers’ Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, Dennis Cooley has been a key figure in Winnipeg’s literary community for over 30 years. He has written extensively on Canadian literature, published 20 books of poetry, and edited numerous others. For years a CanLit professor at the University of Manitoba, Dennis Cooley, now retired, lives and writes in Winnipeg.

Charlotte Cranston is Edmonton’s first Youth Poet Laureate. In addition to being a poet, she is a workshop facilitator, an occasional princess, and a two-time member of the Edmonton Slam Team, which competes nationally at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Her work has been published in The 40 Below Project Volume II, The Glass Buffalo, The Gateway Magazine, and several online publications. Currently she runs a youth poetry meetup series called Young Edmonton Poets, or YEP! She loves the smell of lilacs and the sound of distant lawnmowers.

Kayla Czaga is the author of For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, 2014), which won The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was nominated for The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and The Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her chapbook Enemy of the People, which explores the USSR under Stalin, was released in September 2015 by Anstruther Press. She lives in Vancouver, BC and serves as the BC/Yukon Representative for The League of Canadian Poets.

D is an Edmontonian who lives and writes in the 118th Ave community. D has performed poems in local slams and art shows and has released two zines of page-poems, as well as one cd of spoken-words. D attempts to write poems as a mode to share, grow, and bask in the transience and uncertainty of life.

Megan Dart: Poet. Playwright. Producer. Megan Dart minds her p’s (but not always her q’s). Alongside her sister Beth, Megan is the co-Artistic Producer of award-winning indie company Catch the Keys Productions, best known for its site-specific, immersive theatre creations. Megan is also the co-Artistic Producer of Common Ground Arts Society, the Communications Specialist with Fringe Theatre, a collective member of The Edmonton Poetry Brothel, and a past member of the Edmonton Slam Team. Megan was named one of the Top 100 Women in Business by the Wanderer Online, and is a University of Grant MacEwan Distinguished Alumni.

Antony Di Nardo is a poet and teacher. He currently divides his time between Beirut, Lebanon – where he teaches English at International College – and central Canada. He is the author of three collections of poems: Alien, Correspondent (Brick Books, 2010), Soul on Standby (Exile Editions, 2010) and Roaming Charges (Brick Books, 2015).

Gavin Doyle is a settler, writer and wanderer from amiskwacîwâskahikan on Treaty 6 Territory. He is thrilled to have his work appear in Hungry. When he’s not reading or writing, you can find Gavin binging reality television.

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.

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.

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.

Lise Gaboury-Diallo teaches in the Département d’études françaises, de langues et de littértures at the Université de Saint-Boniface. Since 1999, she has published 7 books of poetry and 2 collections of short stories in French. She won the CBC /Prix littéraires Radio-Canada first prize in the French poetry category for her collection Homestead, poèmes du cœur de l’Ouest, with an English translation by Mark Stout. (2005). Her collection L’endroit et l’envers wins the Prix Rue-Deschambault in 2009 (Manitoba Book Awards) and her short story collection Lointaines, nouvelles wins the same prize in 2011. Les enfants de Tantale (2011) is short-listed for the Prix des lecteurs de Radio Canada in 2012. Her most recent collection of poetry Confessions sans pénitence is illustrated by Denis Devigne, and published by the Éditions du Blé in 2013.

Lise Gaboury-Diallo est professeure au département d’études françaises, de langues et de littératures à l’Université de Saint-Boniface. Depuis 1999, elle a signé sept recueils de poésie et deux recueils de nouvelles depuis 1999. Les Prix littéraires Radio-Canada 2004 lui décernent le premier prix, catégorie poésie française, pour son texte Homestead, poèmes du cœur de l’Ouest, avec une traduction en anglais de Mark Stout (2005). Son recueil de poésie L’endroit et l’envers remporte le Prix Rue-Deschambault en 2009 et Lointaines, nouvelles remporte le même prix en 2011. Sa collection de nouvelles Les enfants de Tantale (2011) figure parmi les six titres finalistes retenus pour le Prix des lecteurs de Radio-Canada en 2012. Son plus récent recueil de poésie, Confessions sans pénitence, illustré par Denis Devigne, paraît aux Éditions du Blé en 2013.

Carolyn Gingrich est une artiste en céramique et une poète basé à Edmonton. Après avoir étudié en théâtre, elle a commencé à étudier la céramique comme médium en art visuel. Elle travaille présentement sur des projets fusionnant différentes disciplines artistiques. Grandissant dans une famille unilingue anglophone, elle s’est immersé dans la langue française à l’école, et y a développé une affinité. Son prosessus créatif la porte maintenant à explorer l’expression de son art en français.

Carolyn Gingrich is a bilingual ceramic artist and spoken word poet based in Edmonton, AB. After having studied theatre, and acting for many years, she started working with with clay – seven years later she is a proficient potter and sculptor, creating visual works that cross artistic disciplines. Her poetry is playful and sometimes absurd. With an anglophone upbringing and a fluency in French based in grade school immersion, Carolyn has most recently been working her much-loved second language into writing and performance.

Alison est une énergie créatrice et une artiste multidisciplinaire. Pour ses œuvres composées et improvisées, elle se sert d’une variété de flûtes traversières, la flûte à bec, la voix, le piano, l’harmonium, et de nombreux instruments à percussions et des sons trouvés. Ses expériences artistiques depuis 2012 incluent la production de l’Unithéâtre, Les Blues des Oubliées de Pierrette Requier, poète lauréate d’Edmonton (2015), plusieurs évènements avec l’ensemble « Trio avec Brio », (Pierrette Requier, Adriana Davis, poètes et Alison Grant-Préville, musicienne de 2012 à présent), et une représentation solo au Festival Skirts Afire (2015). Son plus récent exploit musical avec les membres de New Music Edmonton, fût Sticks and Stones de Christian Wolff au Edmonton Fringe Festival 2015.

Dans ses temps “libre”, Alison est une maman engagée, musicienne, et enseignante de flûte traversière, flûte à bec et chorale au Suzuki Charter School d’Edmonton. De temps à autre, vous pouvez aussi entendre Alison jouer de la flûte avec l’ensemble de musique de chambre, Opus@12. On peut voir Alison au Festival Skirts Afire 2016 avec poète, Giselle Lemire et le duo acro-yoga, Dawn Lamothe et Kelsey Waddell au mois d’avril.

Darrin Hagen is an award-winning playwright, composer and drag artiste. He is the author of The Edmonton Queen, which won a Sterling Award and was published in book form by Brindle & Glass Publishing. Darrin is the Artistic Director of Guys In Disguise, which recently celebrated a quarter-century of creating drag comedies that have toured across North America. He has received 7 Sterling awards for his work in the Edmonton theatre scene. Other plays by Darrin include Buddy (nominated for Outstanding New Play); With Bells On (nominated for Outstanding New Play); BitchSlap!; The Neo-Nancies: Hitler’s Kickline; Tornado Magnet: A Salute to Trailer Court Women (published by Brindle & Glass); and Witch Hunt at the Strand.

With his collaborator Trevor Schmidt he has created PsychoBabble, Dragula, Klondykes and Flora & Fawna’s Field Trip (winner of the Sterling Awaard for Outstanding New Fringe Work).

Darrin is also the host of Queer Places, an episodic television doc that explores LGBTQ life in small-town Alberta, and has also directed and curated the legendary Loud & Queer Cabaret, which recently had its 20th anniversary, and is the editor of Queering the Way: The Loud & Queer Anthology, a collection of many of the writers that had been mentored by this unique event. In 2005, Hagen was named one of 100 Edmontonians of the Century. To the best of his knowledge, he’s the only Drag Queen on that list.

Marina Reid Hale can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a writer when she grew up (save for a week in grade two when she wanted to be a dolphin). An Edmonton spoken word writer, performer, and educator, Marina spends her time competing in poetry slams, leading writing workshops, and working at the family wig shop. She has represented Edmonton in two national poetry competitions; created a one-woman spoken word poetry show, Monster Girl, for NextFest 2015; was a part of the initial #yegwords coffee sleeve project; and is the creator of the Giant Fridge Magnet Poetry art installation. In 2017, Marina released her first poetry chapbook, These Are Not Love Poems, with Glass Buffalo. Officially a writer now, she is still trying to work on the growing up part.

Benjamin Hertwig’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in the New York Times, NPR, the Walrus, Prairie Schooner, Maisonneuve, and Pleiades, among others. He was the recipient of a 2017 National Magazine Award, and his debut poetry collection, Slow War, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award.

Historian and poet Walter Hildebrandt was born in Brooks, Alberta and now lives in Edmonton. He was the Director of University of Calgary Press and Athabasca University Press. He has worked as a historian for Parks Canada and as a consultant to the Treaty 7 Tribal Council, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and the Banff Bow Valley Task Force. He was awarded the Gustavus Myers Award in 1997, for outstanding work on intolerance in North America, for his book The Spirit and Intent of Treaty 7. His long poem Sightings was nominated for the McNally-Robinson Book of the Year in Manitoba in 1992. A previous volume of poetry, Where the Land Gets Broken, received the Stephan G. Stephansson for best poetry book in Alberta in 2005. Documentaries (NewWest Press) is his eighth book of poetry.

Gerald Hill has published six poetry collections — two of which won Saskatchewan Book Awards for Poetry. His latest collection, Hillsdale Book, came out with NeWest Press in April, 2015. Two sub-sets of that book were published in 2012: Hillsdale, a Map, produced with designer Jared Carlson, and Streetpieces, a chapbook produced by David Zieroth at The Alfred Gustav Press in Vancouver. Also in 2015, Hill published A Round for Fifty Years: A History of Regina’s Globe Theatre with Coteau Books. Widely published in literary magazines and online journals, active as both organizer of and participant in workshops and readings, conferences and courses, and winner of Second Prize in the 2011 CBC Literary Awards, Gerald Hill is newly retired from his career teaching English and Creative Writing at Luther College at the University of Regina. In the fall of 2015 he was Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence at Fool’s Paradise in Toronto. He is the current poet laureate of Saskatchewan.

Shayne Golosky-Johnston is a two-spirit poet coming from both the windswept yellow plains, and mountainsides of the nitsitapi lands and the dense forests and muskeg of the nehiyaw territory. They have been performing off and on within amiskwaciwaskahikan for about five years. They work around themes of belonging, queerness, colonization, mental illness, home, and what it means to walk in a good way as a queer mixed indigenous person who has been transplanted into a city (in)famous for its gentrification projects.

Claire Kelly’s first full-length collection, Maunder, is available from Palimpsest Press. Her poem “Mother, What Should We Do?” was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2017. She lives and writes in Edmonton. Her second book of poetry, One Thing – Then Another, is published with ECW.

Catherine Kidd is a Montreal writer known for her zoological performance poetry. Her solo show Sea Peach won a Montreal Critics’ for Best New Text, touring to Toronto Harbourfront’s World Stage, the Edinburgh Fringe, and the Spier Arts Poetry Festival in Cape Town, South Africa. A graduate of Concordia’s MA program in Creative Writing, Catherine has taught writing at that university and elsewhere. A chapter of her novel, Missing the Ark, was nominated for the Journey Prize, while her voice may be heard in air safety messages, video games, and as the voice of a prehistoric snail at the Joggins Fossil Museum. Her solo show Hyena Subpoena toured recently to Singapore.

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.

Hive is Randy Kohan’s third collection of lyric poetry with Ekstasis Editions. His previous works are Rain of Naughts (2015) and Hammers & Bells (2013). Two of his poems, Trains and Northern Monks, can be viewed as poetry videos on YouTube. He lives in Edmonton with his wife and their two sons.

Author photograph by Hans Olson.

Lady Vanessa Cardona is a mestiza, Colombian, first generation immigrant artist, poet, theatre practitioner, community organizer, dance instructor and photographer. She started her spoken word career in Windhoek, Namibia and currently lives in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), Treaty 6 Territory. Lady Vanessa is the 2018 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Champion. She graduated with a BFA and specialization in Theatre and Development from Concordia University. She has written and performed her own one woman show called “Three Ladies” at the Edmonton Found Festival of 2017. She is also a co-creator and performer of “Whiteface” produced with Mile Zero Dance, Hip-hop in the park, Winnipeg and Edmonton Fringe Festival. Lady is a mentor of a refugee youth leadership group called, “Newcomers are lit” officially known as the Canadian Council for Refugees Youth Network. She is the founder of “Fiesta y Resistancia” Alberta’s interdisciplinary Latinx art Festival. Lady has toured and competed around Canada and the United States promoting her art as an Edmonton local artist and proud member of the Breath in Poetry collective. She features in the chapbook Water, published by Glass Buffalo. Lady is currently working on her upcoming book La Sangre Llama. Lady believes in the healing powers art provides for our community. Healing is not polite; art allows us to be the frankest versions of ourselves so that we may strengthen our souls, minds and the community around us. Art is where we come together through unity of purpose.

Sarah Lang was born in Canada. Her most recent book, For Tamara (House of (House of Anansi Press), won the Alberta Writers’ Guild Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. She is also the author of The Work of Days (Coach House Books).

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.

A seasoned bilingual actress, director, and coach as well as a Spoken Word Poet and past Edmonton Slam Champion, this season Giselle initiated Poetry Strip Tease…Poets Go Paperless, a Workshop Series on memorization and performance. Through this effort, Giselle hopes to see more and more passionate paperless poetry performances springing up throughout the city for all kinds of events.

John Leppard is an active member of the Edmonton poetry scene, performing his unique style of spoken word in a variety of venues. A respected leader in the poetry community, John brings abundant experience and skill to the role of performance facilitator.

Winona Linn is a poet, visual artist, performer, teacher and spoken word artist. Originally from Kingston, Ontario, Linn made a name for herself in the thriving poetry community of Halifax, Nova Scotia while attending the University of King’s College. In only her second year at school, she slammed for and won a spot on the two-time champion Hali Slam team and competed on a national level at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Linn was the 2011 poet laureate of the Federal Green Party of Canada, and wrote and performed poems on a variety of issues for the duration of the 2011 election. Her poem “Leave,” quickly gained popularity on Youtube and has been featured in articles on the CBC and CTV websites, as well as many other online news sources.

Linn’s most recent work, The Truth About Rabbits, was published in the spring of 2015 as a joint project between Thee Hellbox Press and Greyweathers Press. This was a joyful collaboration between Linn and two letterpress studios, and resulted in a limited-edition hand-bound rare book, with Linn’s poetry set one letter at a time by Hugh Barclay of Thee Hellbox Press, and interspersed with the evocative and charming wood engraving illustrations of Greyweathers Press’ Larry Thompson. It is available for sale at two of Paris’ well-known English bookstores: Shakespeare and Company, and Abbey Books.

Currently, Linn lives in Paris, France. She is a regular writer and feature performer in the Paris literary and spoken word scenes, and is in the process of publishing her third book, a graphic novel.”

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.

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.

Dr. Manijeh Mannani is Professor of Literary Studies and Dean in Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences at Athabasca University. Her research interests include Persian literature, comparative literature, poetry, and life-writing.

Dr. Mannani will be featured in the event WALKING INTO GOD BY TED BLODGETT.

Haitian-born spoken word artist and patient advocate, Medgine is a person for whom the love of language and the alchemy of words is second nature. Her multi-lingual upbringing (French, Creole, English) not only prompted her to begin experimenting with the potential and magic of language but naturally compelled her into a deep love of poetry. Over the years, Medgine became a Lupus, CIDP, Polymyositis, and Raynaud’s warrior, all of which fuels her desire to merge storytelling and her power of language into patient advocacy especially for those living with chronic illness. Medgine currently serves as a Patient Advisor and is working on her first collection of poetry.

Colin Matty is a writer and performer from Edmonton AB. In 2011 he was a part of the championship team at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. He has toured the country with his poetry numerous times, most recently to the Victoria Spoken Word Festival as a member of the All-Star Ensemble. Colin runs Edmonton’s much talked of Poem Shop out of his typewriter, spreading fine verse the the people of our fair city. Colin is also the Director of WordsWorth, a creative writing residency for youth under the Writers Guild of Alberta, and performs regularly with Rapid Fire Theatre, Edmonton’s longest running improv theatre company.

Wendy McGrath is a writer and artist who works in multiple genres. Her poetry/photography collaboration with Danny Miles, drummer for July Talk and Tongue Helmet, is trying to find a home. McGrath’s most recent spoken word project, BEFORE WE KNEW is her second CD with Sascha Liebrand. Her first project with Liebrand, BOX, is an adaptation of her eponymous long poem with the group Quarto & Sound. “MOVEMENT 1” from the CD was nominated for a 2018 City of Edmonton Music Award in the Jazz Recording of the Year category. McGrath continues her artistic practice in visual art—including printmaking and artist’s books.

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/

Tim Mikula is an artist and poet living in Edmonton, Alberta. He has performed in venues as large as the Garneau Theatre, and as small as a 4×4×8 box in a park.

Matt. Miller aka Lip Balm is the Artistic Director of WE FLIP TABLES! 2014 Canadian Poetry Slam Champion. 3-time Canadian representative at the National Poetry Slam. Mirrors weren’t created for vanity; merely a checkpoint to see if you still exist.

Megan Paranich has a B.Sc. in Geology and is currently working on her BA in Anthropology. She loves earth science, socio-linguistics, and long walks on the beach. Her writing has appeared inGlass Buffalo, Canthius, and Sterling. If you ask her to talk, she probably won’t stop.

Nisha Patel is an award-winning queer and disabled spoken word artist. She was the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate, and is a Canadian Individual Slam Champion. Her debut collection COCONUT is available at Glass Bookshop. You can find her at nishapatel.ca.

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.

Harold Rhenisch is the author of 12 full length books of poetry, most recently The Spoken World (Hagios 2012) and Two Minds (Frontenac House, 2015), which came out of the experience of two pilgrimages on the The Old Salt Road in 2008 and 2010. He has written 16 other books of memoir, literary nonfiction, environmental writing, fiction, translation and essay. His Out of the Interior and Tom Thomson’s Shack, which adapt the long poem form to prose memoir, are classics. He has earned the George Ryga Prize, four B.C. Book Prize nominations. He has edited many prominent poetry books, especially from the prairies. He reviews poetry titles for Arc and The Pacific Rim Review of Books, and has earned a reputation as a go-to editor for nonfiction memoirs that bridge genres, including Phyllis Nackomeckny’s Vidh, Lorne Dufour’s Joseph’s Prayer and Vangie Bergum’s Bestamor and Me. He has won the Malahat Review long poem prize (twice), a CBC Poetry Prize, an ARC poem of the year prize, and other national and regional prizes for poetry, book reviewing and playwriting. He works closely with environmental photographer and publisher Chris Harris and writes (and photographs) the environmental blog okanaganokanogan.com. In 2013, he was writer in residence at the Klaustrid Cultural Centre in Skriduklaustur, Iceland. His experience on three journeys throughout Iceland, in three seasons, forms his illustrated poetic essay on the art of the book in the age of images, The Art of Haying. Harold lives in the Okanagan Valley in the grasslands of British Columbia.

Armand Garnet Ruffo is a writer and scholar drawing on his Anishinaabe (Ojibway) heritage for his work. Born in northern Ontario, he is recognized as one of the earliest contributors to both contemporary Indigenous literature and Indigenous literary criticism in Canada. In 2016, he co-edited Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism (Broadview Press). In 2015, he published The Thunderbird Poems, based on the paintings of the acclaimed Ojibway artist Norval Morrisseau (Harbour Publishing), and that same year his creative biography Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (Douglas & McIntyre) was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award. He is currently the Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Photo credit to Pearl Pirie

Artiste français multi-disciplinaire , naviguant entre écriture , jeu , mise en scène et musique. Il enseigne aussi le jeu et l’ écriture scénique au Campus Saint Jean-Université de l’ Alberta. Il a publié une pièce aux éditions françaises Les Cygnes, Dalia une Odyssée et s’ apprête à publier un recueil de nouvelles Il y a une vie avant la mort. En musique ,il a sorti l’ album Transports en 2011 et prépare le deuxième Rêveur éveillé pour l’ automne 2016.

French-born Bernard Salva is an actor, director, playwright, teacher and song-writer. He sketches a soulful journey of deeply personal songs and poems of love and loss around the world. His play Dalia une Odyssée has been published in 2014 in France and his album Transports in 2011 in France and Canada.

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.

As much as he has made splashes & waves in these areas he has found his voice & calling with his writing and sharing of spoken word. Prufrock is a writer & storyteller from an age long past, combining both seriousness & comedy to weave tales of his own journey as well as the human experience. A 2x national champion and the current Canadian individual champion. He will be representing Canada at the world championships this coming May. Those who have seen him perform do not regret or forget the experience. He remains humble in his pursuit for inner & outer greatness.

Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, and film. Her best-selling book I’m Afraid of Men was her­ald­ed by Vanity Fair as “cultural rocket fuel,” and her album with Queer Songbook Orchestra, Part‑Time Woman, was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. She is also the founder of the publishing imprint VS. Books. A six-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, Vivek was a Pride Toronto Grand Marshal and has featured on The Globe and Mail’s Best Dressed list. She is a director on the board of the Tegan and Sara Foundation, an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Calgary, and is currently adapting her debut play, How To Fail As A Popstar, into a television pilot script with the support of CBC.

Kelly Shepherd’s second poetry collection, Insomnia Bird (Thistledown Press, 2018) won the 2019 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Kelly has written seven chapbooks, and he is a poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter. He has a Creative Writing MFA from UBC Okanagan (with a thesis on the intersections of ecopoetry and work poetry), and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Alberta (with a thesis on sacred geography). Originally from Smithers BC, Kelly currently lives in Edmonton, and teaches at NAIT.

Richard Siken is a poet, painter, filmmaker, as well as an editor at Spork Press. He is a recipient of two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, two Lannan Residency Fellowships, and a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, the Thom Gunn Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent book is War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015).

Gerald St. Maur is the former Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Alberta. He divides time between the visual arts and the literary arts, as poet and dramatist. In the past decade, his visual work has concentrated on charcoal and conte drawings, the former in landscapes and the latter on the figure. He is most interested in chirarscuro effects found in landscape depictions of trees, skies and water. He is a signature member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and the Alberta Society of Artists of which he is a past president.

“I have always been intrigued by chiaroscuro effects in trees and skies when the setting sun or stormy clouds create such interesting contrasts in light and shade. A good deal of these landscapes have been done in charcoal, and are the subject of my forthcoming book Searching Skies, Seeing Through Trees. More recently, my work has extended in two new directions. The first combines my poetry with figurative drawings in pastel to create haiga, an ancient Japanese art re-configured for the contemporary Canadian scene. In the second, which might be described as decoupage, drawings are deconstructed to explore shapes, much as counterpoint does in music.”

Tab is a poet, dancer and community activator who strives to create safe spaces, facilitate artists of many disciplines and promote creative freedom and artistic experimentation in inclusive environments. They are an original member of The Edmonton Poetry Brothel, a 2016 Slam Team Finalist, creator of Word Fight! and use their poetry to create beauty in vulnerability and display strength through art.

Poet and editor Richard Therrien has worked at a number of occupations, including landscape labourer, photography instructor, filmmaker, and speech writer. Born and raised on – and a repeated escapee from – the Canadian prairie, he has published across North America and currently works and lives in North Vancouver.

Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer of poetry, fiction and children’s literature. Her first book, North End Love Songs (The Muses’ Company) won the 2013 Governor General Literary Award for Poetry and was the 2015 selection for On the Same Page, Manitoba’s Book Club. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies across the globe. Vermette lives, works and plays in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

In 2015, Portage and Main Press published her seven volume picture book series, The Seven Teachings Stories. This year, she is releasing a National Film Board short documentary, this river, and a novel, The Break (House of Anansi 2016).

She has been a proud member of the Indigenous Writers Collective since 2004, and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. When not being writerly, she coordinates arts programs in Winnipeg, and lives with her family in a cranky old house within skipping distance of the temperamental Red River.

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.

Brandon Wint is an Ontario born poet and spoken word artist who uses poetry to attend to the joy and devastation and inequity associated with this era of human and ecological history. Increasingly, his work on the page and in performance casts a tender but robust attention toward the movements and impacts of colonial, capitalist logic, and how they might be undone. In this way, Brandon Wint is devoted to a poetics of world making, world altering and world breaking.

For Brandon, the written and spoken word is a tool for examining and enacting his sense of justice, and imagining less violence futures for himself and the world he has inherited. For more than a decade, Brandon has been a sought-after, touring performer, and has presented his work in the United States, Australia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Jamaica. His poems and essays have been published in national anthologies, including The Great Black North: Contemporary African-Canadian Poetry (Frontenac House, 2013) and Black Writers Matter (University of Regina Press, 2019). Divine Animal is his debut book of poetry.

Anna Yin is Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate and Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets. She has authored six books of poetry and her poems have appeared on ARC Poetry, New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, World Journal etc.  Anna won awards including the Ted Plantos Memorial Award, two MARTY Literary Arts Awards and the Chinese Professionals Association of Canada Professional Achievement Award.  Her poems in English & Chinese and ten translations by her were in a Canadian Studies textbook used by Humber College.  Her poem “Still Life” was part of Poetry in Transit featured on buses across Canada in 2013. She read her poetry on Parliament Hill and has been featured at 2015 Austin International Poetry Festival and other international events. Her Poetry Alive workshops combining computer arts and audience participation are welcomed at schools, colleges and libraries, especially for the Poets in Schools Program.