2018 Headliners

Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). Abel’s latest project NISHGA (forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in 2021) is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence and the often invisible intergenerational impact of residential schools. Abel recently completed a PhD at Simon Fraser University, and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing.

Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is a poet, author, and scholar from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection, This Wound Is a World, which was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Belcourt is a recipient of the prestigious Rhodes scholarship and an Indspire Award, the highest honour the Indigenous community bestows on its leaders. He is currently working on his PhD at the University of Alberta and will join UBC’s Creative Writing Program as an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Creative Writing in January 2020.

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.

E.D. Blodgett (1935 – 2018), PhD, was a poet who published close to 30 books of poetry, for which he received two Governor General’s Awards as well as awards from the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and the Canadian Authors Association.

Ali Blythe’s first book of poems, Twoism, was released by icehouse poetry to critical acclaim in 2015. He is the winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry, finalist for the BC Book Awards, and recipient of an honour of distinction from the Writers Trust of Canada for emerging LGBTQ writers. His poems are published in literary journals and anthologies throughout Canada, and in Germany and England. Blythe lives in Vancouver and is editor-in-chief of the Claremont Review, an edgy international magazine for youth writers and artists.

Nicholas Bradley is a poet, literary critic, and scholarly editor. He teaches in the Department of English at the University of Victoria.

Christian Campbell is the author of Running the Dusk (2010), which won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was a finalist for the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection and the Cave Canem Poetry Prize among other awards. Running the Dusk was translated into Spanish and published in Cuba as Correr el Crepúsculo (2015).

Campbell studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and has received awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Arvon Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf, and elsewhere.

Campbell delivered the fifteenth annual Derek Walcott Lecture for Nobel Laureate Week in St. Lucia and won the Art Writing Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries for his work on Jean-Michel Basquiat. He was recently the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Margaret Christakos’ recent poetry titles include charger and Dear Birch. Previous books include Excessive Love Prostheses, Sooner, Welling, Multitudes, the novel Charisma, and a multimodal memoir, Her Paraphernalia: On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies. Space Between Her Lips: The Poetry of Margaret Christakos, edited by Gregory Betts, was published in 2017 and several of her collections have been nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Christakos has served as writer-in-residence at five Canadian universities, including the University of Alberta (2017-2018). Born and raised in Sudbury, she has worked as a writer, poet, instructor, and event organizer in Toronto since 1987.

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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.

Myrl Coulter is the author of two award-winning books: A Year of Days (UAP) and The House With the Broken Two (Anvil Press). Her new book, The Left-Handed Dinner Party and Other Stories is about perplexing family secrets and the haunting consequences of loss. She lives in Edmonton.

Richard Davies is a U of A grad who taught senior high English for 30 years. 50 of his textbooks and guides have sold over a million copies and been variously authorized for classroom use in each Canadian province. He also was a singer-musician-leader of many groups from 1968 to 2003. Richard has been a long-time Stroll of Poets member and read with Spiritus, a local performing poetry trio in the ’90s. His own chapbooks include Negative Capability, The Rest of It, and – just out – OPUS (in Six Suites). His poetry is known for its humor, romance, and quirky irony.

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.

Norma Dunning is an Inuk professor, grandmother and writer. Her short story collection, Tainna (the unseen ons), received the Governor General’s Literary Awards for 2021. Annie Muktuk and Other Stories received the Danuta Gleed award in 2018. Dunning’s first collection of poetry, Eskimo Pie: a poetics of Inuit Identity, was released in 2020. Her second collection of poetry, Akia (the other side), will be published in July 2022. Kinauva? (what’s your name?), Dunning’s first work of nonfiction, will release in 2023. She lives in Edmonton.

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.

Omar Farah is a 22 year old Somali-Canadian Poet, Engineer-in-training, community builder, and all around “homie”. Although he is relatively new to the spoken word scene, Omar has managed to make a name for himself locally and abroad as the former Edmonton Slam Champion, TedX Speaker, winner of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words, and finalist in the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. He has performed across Canada and the United states from small local cafe’s to theatres. His style of rhythmic, complex at times, yet relatable poetry analyzes the world at large from the perspective of African diaspora and aims to transforms the biggest of critiques.

Patrick Friesen has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays and, with P. K. Brask, co-translations of several Danish poets, including Ulrikka Gernes’ Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments which was short-listed for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize. Friesen has also written stage and radio plays, text for dance, and has recorded two CDs of spoken word and improv music with Marilyn Lerner. In 2018 his book of poetry, Songen, was published with Mother Tongue, and his play A Short History of Crazy Bone was staged by Theatre Projects Manitoba.

Evelyne Gagnon is a Professor of French literary studies at Athabasca University. Her areas of expertise are Poetry and lyricism, as well as Québécois and Canadian literatures. She is also publishing her own creative writings in various literary Journals (Le Sabord, Moebius, Les écrits). Before joining AU, she held two Postdoctoral Fellowships exploring the forms of melancholia in recent Quebecois and Canadian literatures. Her current research moreover focuses on a 21st century mélancolie en mode mineur, which also reflects the precariousness of the present time. Through various collaborations, she co-organized many conferences, co-edited two peer-reviewed publications on Québécois poetry, and published peer-reviewed articles in various scholarly journals.

Evelyne Gagnon est professeure de littérature à l’Université d’Athabasca en Alberta. Elle a réalisé un doctorat sur la poésie québécoise et deux recherches postdoctorales sur les formes nouvelles de la mélancolie dans la littérature contemporaine du Québec et du Canada (anglophone et francophone). Ses recherches actuelles explorent plus avant les manifestations d’une mélancolie en mode mineur depuis le tournant du XXIe siècle, qui fait écho aux inquiétudes particulières de notre époque. Elle a publié des articles scientifiques sur la littérature et codirigé deux collectifs sur la poésie. Elle a reçu en 2001 le Prix de poésie Clément-Marchand et ses poèmes ont paru depuis dans Le Sabord, Moebius et Les écrits.

Writer and storyteller Shauntay Grant served as Halifax’s third poet laureate. A descendant of Black Loyalists, Jamaican Maroons, and Black Refugees who came to Canada during the 18th and 19th centuries, Shauntay’s love of language stretches back to her storytelling roots in Nova Scotia’s historic Black communities. She is a multidisciplinary artist with professional degrees and training in creative writing, music, and theatre, and her homegrown artistic practice embraces African Nova Scotian folk tradition as well as contemporary approaches to literature and performance. She is currently developing her stage play The Bridge as 2b theatre company’s Playwright-In-Residence; the company will premiere the work in 2019. Shauntay’s awards and honours include a Poet of Honour prize from Spoken Word Canada, a Best Atlantic Published Book Prize from the Atlantic Book Awards, and a Joseph S. Stauffer Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. She teaches creative writing at Dalhousie University.

Michael Gravel is a poet, writer, emcee, publisher, and tea afficionado. He believes that art, design, and poetry strive for the same ideal: to say the most with the least. His poetry chapbooks include The Fast Places (2008), Corduroy Forecast (2010), and We Need You (2014). He designs and publishes books at The Rasp and the Wine. He was the frontman of the Raving Poets from 2003 – 2010. His other skills include poetic performance, event emceeing, lecturing, and teaching. His poetic influences include Carl Sagan, Jack Kerouac, and Dylan Thomas. When not digesting the day’s codswallop, he can be found writing & reading, drinking tea, and walking.

Rayanne Haines is an award-winning hybrid author and the 2022 Regional Writer in Residence for the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries. Her first full-length poetry collection Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2018) was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award. Tell the Birds Your Body is Not a Gun (Frontenac House, 2021) is a current finalist for the Alberta Literary Awards Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Her essay This is Normal was shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Awards Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award. Rayanne is the host of the literary podcast Crow Reads and is an Edmonton Artist Trust Fund recipient. Her poetry and essays have been featured in anthologies and journals in Canada, the UK and the USA.

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.

Scott Jackshaw studies English and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. His work has previously appeared in Glass Buffalo, as well as in chapbooks from the University of Alberta’s Graduate Students of English Collective and The Olive Reading Series.

Performance Poet, activist and playwright Penn Kemp (M.Ed.) is London Ontario’s first Poet Laureate. She received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal for service to arts and culture in London. Her latest publication is Local Heroes (Insomniac Press) and a play, The Triumph of Teresa Harris. Other recent works are Barbaric Cultural Practice (Quattro, 2016); Dream Sequins (Lyrical Myrical Press); and Jack Layton Art in Action, edited for Quattro Books, Toronto. As Writer-in-Residence for Western University, her project was the DVD, Luminous Entrance: a Sound Opera for Climate Change Action. The League of Canadian Poets acclaimed her as Spoken Word Artist, 2015, an award for lifetime achievement. (http://poets.ca/2015/04/01/golden-beret-2015-penn-kemp/). She is their 40th Life Member.

Photo credit: Mary McDonald

Helen Knott is a Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw, and mixed Euro- descent woman living in Fort St. John, British Columbia. In 2016, Helen was one of sixteen global change makers featured by the Nobel Women’s Initiative for being committed to end gender- based violence. Helen was selected as a 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author. In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience is her first book.

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.

Sarah-Jean Krahn is the editor of the online feminist creative writing magazine S/tick and holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University. Her writing appears in the Berkeley Poetry Review and Feminist Studies, and a portion of Weed Apologue was recently nominated for a Pushcart. Canadian publications include Arc, Cumulus Press, dead (g)end(er), ditch, Eleventh Transmission, Herizons, and NōD. When not writing or tutoring at the local college where she works, Sarah-Jean can be found reading on the bus or eating weeds in the woods with her dog. Visit her at sarahjeancreates.com.

Angela Kublik is an Edmonton based writer, librarian, editor and publisher. Her chapbook, If I Must Leave, was published in 2017 by House of Blue Skies. With Dymphny Dronyk, she edited two best-selling poetry anthologies: Home and Away: Alberta’s Finest Poets Muse on the Meaning of Home (2009) and Writing the Land: Alberta through its Poets (2007).

Austen Lee is completing her BA Honours in English and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. She is the 2017 winner of the James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction, which is awarded annually by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. Last year, her series of poems, The Unselfie Project, won the James Patrick Folinsbee Prize in English and were published in Glass Buffalo.

Reinekke Lengelle, PhD, is a poet, playwright and academic. She is a visiting graduate professor with Athabasca University and a senior researcher at The Hague University in the Netherlands. Reinekke created the Career-Writing method, where people write creatively and expressively as a way of developing career identity. Many of her articles have been published in scholarly journals and her book Happy will be published in Dutch next year. She has also worked as Artist-on-the-Ward at the University of Alberta hospital and has taught master classes in Career Writing in Canada, the UK, Finland, Iceland and The Netherlands. www.writingtheself.ca

Reinekke Lengelle, Ph. D., est poète, dramaturge et universitaire. Elle est professeure invitée à l’Université d’Athabasca et chercheuse associée à l’Université de La Haye, aux Pays-Bas. Reinekke Lengelle a créé une méthode d’écriture spécifique au développement professionnel, qui utilise diverses formes d’écriture et de création littéraire afin d’explorer et de consolider une identité professionnelle. Ses articles ont été publiés dans divers périodiques scientifiques et son livre Happy paraîtra en néerlandais l’année prochaine. Elle a également travaillé en tant qu’artiste à l’hôpital de l’Université de l’Alberta et a donné des cours de maîtrise portant sur le développement professionnel par le biais de la création littéraire au Canada, au Royaume-Uni, en Finlande, en Islande et aux Pays-Bas.

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.

Amy Malbeuf is a Métis visual artist from Rich Lake, Alberta. Through utilizing mediums such as caribou hair tufting, beadwork, installation, performance, and video Malbeuf explores notions of identity, place, language, and ecology. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in over forty shows at such venues as Art Mûr, Montréal, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; and Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, New Zealand. Malbeuf has participated in many international artist residencies including at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, (AUS); The Banff Centre; The Labrador Research Institute; and Santa Fe Art Institute (US). She holds a MFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Malbeuf has been the recipient of such honours as the 2016 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award, the 2016 William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists in Canada from the Hnatyshyn Foundation, a 2017 REVEAL award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation and was long listed for the 2017 Sobey Art Award.

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.

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.

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.

Sharon McCartney is the author of Metanoia (2016, Biblioasis), Hard Ass (2013, Palimpsest), For and Against (2010, Goose Lane Editions), The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2007, Nightwood Editions), Karenin Sings the Blues (2003, Goose Lane Editions) and Under the Abdominal Wall (1999, Anvil Press). She has an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and an LL.B. from the University of Victoria. In 2008, she received the Acorn/Plantos People’s Prize for poetry.

Mark A. McCutcheon is Professor of Literary Studies at Athabasca University. His poems are forthcoming or published in journals like On Spec, Unbroken, EVENT, and Existere. His poems “The leaf is not the line” and “Heaven help the roses” placed as finalists in Riddle Fence’s and Into the Void’s 2017 poetry contests, respectively. Mark’s literary criticism appears in The Explicator, English Studies in Canada, and other scholarly periodicals. His first scholarly book, on Canadian adaptations of Frankenstein, is forthcoming this spring from Athabasca University Press.

Mark A. McCutcheon est professeur d’études littéraires à l’Université Athabasca. Ses poèmes sont à paraître ou ont déjà été publiés dans des revues comme On Spec, Unbroken, EVENT et Existere. En 2017, ses poèmes “The leaf is not the line” et “Heaven help the roses” ont respectivement été finalistes aux concours de poésie chapeautés par les publications Riddle Fence et Into the Void. Ses articles sur la littérature ont par ailleurs paru dans de nombreux périodiques scientifiques, dont The Explicator et English Studies in Canada. Sa première monographie, portant sur les adaptations canadiennes de Frankenstein, sera publiée ce printemps par Athabasca University Press.

Timiro Mohamed is a Somali-Canadian spoken word poet, Edmonton’s former youth poet laureate, and co-author of the chapbook Water. Her practice is rooted in responsible storytelling, centers Black Femmes, and celebrates her many identities.

Alessandra Naccarato is writer and spoken word artist living on the traditional territories of the Saanich, Cowichan, and Chemainus First Nations (Salt Spring Island). Her poetry has received the Bronwen Wallace Award from the Writer’s Trust of Canada the CBC Poetry Prize, and been widely published across Canada and the United states. She has toured nationally and internationally as a spoken word poet, worked with thousands of youth across the country, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Emilia Nielsen’s debut book, Surge Narrows (Leaf Press, 2013), was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Body Work, her second collection of poetry, will be published by Signature Editions in spring 2018. She holds a PhD in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Nielsen is the author of the scholarly text Disrupting Breast Cancer Narratives: Stories of Rage and Repair, forthcoming with the University of Toronto Press in fall 2018. Currently, she is a Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Literature Centre at the University of Alberta. On July 1 2018, she will join York University’s Department of Social Science as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Health & Society Program.

Sofia Parrila is an undergraduate student in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. Her poem To My Childhood Friend won the L. June Kelly Prize for undergraduate poetry and appeared in Glass Buffalo magazine. She aspires to become an absent-minded professor living in a Hobbit hole.

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.

Angeline Schellenberg’s first collection Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016) won the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, and the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. Her work placed second in 2016 and third in 2014 in Prairie Fire’s Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award Contest, and was shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2015 Poem of the Year. Her poems have also appeared in numerous journals such as TNQ, Grain, and Lemon Hound, and in the 2015 Alfred Gustav Press chapbook Roads of Stone. Angeline lives in Winnipeg with her husband, their two teenagers, and a German shepherd-corgi.

Grayson Thate (he/him) is a poet born in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton). He is currently studying heritage management, and hopes to go to law school in the near future. As a past Youth Poet Laureate, he has been passionate about poetry and how it brings people together for many years. With a background in policy and education, Grayson is excited to be on the Edmonton Poetry Festival board and work to connect people with poetry in ways that are innovative and accessible.

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.

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performer, therapist, lasagna lover and wicked witch who divides her heart between Toronto and Montreal. Her writing has been published widely in print and online, with pieces in Buzzfeed, Asian American Literary Review, Canadian Art, GUTS, Plenitude Magazine, and more. The winner of the 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBT Writers, she is the author of the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press), a place called No Homeland (Arsenal Pulp Press), and the children’s book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (Arsenal Pulp Press).

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.

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.

Ella Zeltserman is a Soviet-born Edmonton poet. Her first book of poetry small things left behind was published by University of Alberta Press in 2014 and won BPAA Robert Kroetsch prize and Betty Averbach prize. Her next book The Air Is Elastic is published by Turnstone Press in the spring 2018.

Jan Zwicky is a philosopher, poet, essayist, and musician. She has published ten collections of poetry, including Songs for Relinquishing the Earth, which won the Governor General’s Award; Forge, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize; and most recently, The Long Walk. Her books of philosophy include Lyric Philosophy, Wisdom & Metaphor, and Alkibiades’ Love. She has served as a faculty member at the Banff Centre Writing Studio and has edited for Brick Books. Since 2017 she has been the series editor of Oksana Poetry and Poetics, published by the University of Regina Press. Zwicky grew up on the prairies, was educated at the Universities of Calgary and Toronto, and currently lives on the west coast of Canada.