Q&A

Mallory Tater’s poetry and fiction have been published in literary magazines across Canada and shortlisted for several awards. She was the 2016 recipient of CV2’s Young Buck Poetry Prize. Tater’s first book of poetry is This Will Be Good and she is the founder of Rahila’s Ghost Press, which publishes limited-edition poetry chapbooks. Tater completed her MFA […]

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, scholar, and musician, and a member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of five previous books, including This Accident of Being Lost, which was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award, was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads, and […]

Arleen Paré is a Victoria writer. She has published five collections of poetry, two of which are cross-genre. She has been short-listed for the BC Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award and has won a Golden Crown Award for Lesbian Poetry, the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, and a Governor General’s Literary Award. A lyrical […]

Danny Ramadan is an award-winning Syrian-Canadian author and LGBTQ-refugees activist. The Clothesline Swing, Ramadan’s debut novel, won the Independent Publisher Book Award for LGBT Fiction, The Canadian Authors Association’s award for Best Fiction, and was shortlisted for Evergreen Award, Sunburst Award and a Lambda Award. It was long listed for Canada Reads 2018. The novel […]

A memoir told in sonnets?! Who takes on this type of challenge — and pulls it off with poetic aplomb in 140 syllable segments! Who else but celebrated poet John Barton with Lost Family. It’s an extraordinary portrait taken as a whole or in single sonnets. Barton, Victoria’s current Poet Laureate, has pushed the boundaries […]

Jessica Johns is a nehiyaw-English-Irish aunty and member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. She is the Managing Editor for Room Magazine and a co-organizer of the Indigenous Brilliance reading series. Her debut poetry chapbook, How Not to Spill, co-won the 2019 BP Nichol Chapbook Award, and her short […]

Joanna Lilley is an award-winning poet living in Whitehorse. Born in the UK, Joanna has always been drawn north, crossing the Arctic Circle twice, before settling in the Yukon. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Malahat Review and Grain. Endlings is her third collection of poetry. Of Endlings, David Suzuki says: “This book is a reminder […]

Annick MacAskill’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad, including Arc, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Fiddlehead, Plenitude, Room Magazine, The Stinging Fly, and Best Canadian Poetry 2019. Her debut collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. […]

Vancouver writer Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth and the editor of the award-winning Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow. Her second book, Better Living through Plastic Explosives, was a Giller Prize finalist. Her fiction has been widely anthologized and won National Magazine Awards. Zsuzsi […]

Madeline Sonik is a writer, anthologist, and teacher who lives in Victoria. Her book of personal essays Afflictions & Departures, was nominated for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, was a finalist for the Charles Taylor Prize, and won the 2012 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. She also has written a novel, short […]

Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer brown femme author and artistic director of b current performing arts. She is of Filipino, Spanish, Chinese, and Indian heritage, and she is married into the Navajo Nation. Hernandez is the author of the novel Scarborough, which is soon to be a motion picture; won the Jim Wong-Chu Award for the unpublished […]

Michael Prior is a writer and a teacher whose poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies in North America and the U.K. He is a past winner of Magma Poetry’s Editors’ Prize, The Walrus’s Poetry Prize, and Matrix Magazine’s Lit POP Award for Poetry. The poet has graduate degrees from the University of Toronto and […]