Zalika Reid-Benta is a Toronto-based writer with an MFA from Columbia University. Her writing debut, an inter-connected short story collection, Frying Plantain has been nominated for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award presented by the Ontario Library Association and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Frying Plantain is can’t-put-down coming of age story, […]
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Q&A with Doreen Vanderstoop
Doreen Vanderstoop is a Calgary-based writer, storyteller and musician. As a storyteller/ musician, she intersperses songs among tales of all genres, including her own original stories. Doreen performs for audiences of all ages at schools, libraries, festivals, conferences and more. She leads workshops to ignite in others a passion for the power of story — […]
Q&A with Sheena Kamal
Sheena Kamal holds an HBA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and was awarded a TD Canada Trust scholarship for community leadership and activism around the issue of homelessness. Her debut novel The Lost Ones won the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, a Strand Magazine Critics Award and Macavity Award for Best First Novel. […]
Q&A with Ariel Gordon
With intimacy and humour award-winning poet Ariel Gordon walks us through the streets of Winnipeg and into the urban forest that is, to her, the city’s heart… Whether it is the effects of climate change on the urban forest or foraging in the city, Dutch elm disease in the trees or squirrels in the living […]
Q&A with Carla Funk
“Vivid, hilarious, enormously entertaining” was one reviewer’s response (Andreas Schroeder) to Carla Funk’s first, and marvelous, memoir of her Mennonite childhood in Vanderhoof BC: Every Little Scrap and Wonder. She is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent, Gloryland. She was the first Poet Laureate of the City of Victoria, has taught at the University […]
Q&A with Julie Paul
Julie Paul is the author of four books, the latest of which Meteorites has just been released. The Pull of the Moon received both an IPPY award and her hometown Victoria Book Prize, and was a Top 100 Book in The Globe and Mail. The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the […]
Q&A with Eve Joseph
Eve Joseph is the author of Quarrels which won the prestigious 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize and shortlisted for Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize 2019, beautifully show her poetic play in tension with truths unravelling in unlikely images and re-forming insight and being. She also won the Huber Evans Non-Fiction Prize, BC Book Prizes for In The Slender Margin, 2015 and Nine Bouquets for Nine Sailors was shortlisted for Prism International Nonfiction prize, […]
Q&A with Darrel J. McLeod
Darrel J. McLeod is the author of Mamaskatch. A Cree Coming of Age. It has been described as “A heartbreakingly candid memoir of A Cree boy’s resilience and grace in the face of chaos and inter-generational tragedy.” Mamaskatch is a Cree word used as a response to dreams shared. This is Darrel’s debut and his […]
Q&A With Kate Braid
Kate Braid is the author of several award-winning poetry books and nonfiction books, ranging from her construction job experiences to Emily Carr to Glenn Gould. She left her carpentry career for what turned into a 23-year career teaching writing. Elemental (February 2018) is her most recent poetry collection. Currently, she divides her time between Victoria, Pender Island […]
Q&A with Sarah Weinman
Interview by Sharleen Jonsson Sarah Weinman is the author of The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World (September 2018). She is editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and ’50s and Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives. She covers book publishing for Publishers Marketplace, and […]
Q&A with Dina Del Bucchia
Poet and short fiction writer Dina Del Bucchia is the author of three collections of poetry, a recent book of short fiction, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, co-host of the Can’t Lit podcast, and a UBC Creative Writing instructor.She is also a senior editor of Poetry Is Dead magazine and the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver […]
Q&A with Palabra Flamenco
Interview by Barbara Black The 2018 Victoria Festival of Authors once again offers an event that draws the written word out of its solitary context and, this year, into a joint artistic exploration of movement, music, and poetry. Victoria’s popular Palabra Flamenco brings their unique literary flamenco collaboration to the festival stage with “La Palabra […]