Q&A 2022

Chelene Knight is an award-winning Vancouver-based writer whose recent works have explored carved-out pasts across the city. She is the author of the poetry collection Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature.…

Alessandra Naccarato was born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto). Her debut poetry collection, Re-Origin of Species, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and named a Best Book of 2019 by CBC Books.

Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene Imminent Domains  invites readers to join a contemplation of survival—our own, and that of the elements that surround us.…

Joseph Dandurand is a storyteller, poet, playwright and member of Kwantlen First Nation located on the Fraser River. He is the director of the Kwantlen Cultural Centre and has authored several books of poetry. His poetry collection, The East Side of It All, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2021, Dandurand received the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.…

Ali Blythe is the author of three books exploring trans-poetics: the debut collection Twoism, the follow-up Hymnswitch, and the forthcoming Stedfast, all with Gooselane-Icehouse. His award-winning work has been called intelligent, charming, jangly, jarring, moody, dreamy and a little bit deadly. He lives in Quadra Village.

Interviewed by Barbara Pelman

Barbara Pelman (BP): This is a work in progress, I understand.…

Arborophobia is Nancy Holmes‘s sixth collection of poetry. She is the editor of Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems and is a poetry editor on The Trumpeter. She creates, supports, and curates eco-themed community-based art projects. Nancy is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna.

Interviewed by Dalyce Joslin

Dalyce Joslin (DJ):  Nancy, in the notes at the end of Arborophobia you define the term as “the fear and hatred of trees.”…

Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books, and past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. She has held the Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer in Residence at Simon Fraser University, and Writer in Residence at the University of Windsor. 

HARROWINGS takes place in the rural and reconnects with Black intellectual and artistic history in relation to agriculture.…

Larissa Lai is the author of The Tiger Flu, Salt Fish Girl, and Iron Goddess of Mercy. Recipient of the Duggins Novelist’s Prize, the Lambda Award, and the Astraea Award, she holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary where she directs The Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing.  …

Julie Sze is a professor of American Studies and founding director of the Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Davis. She has authored and edited three books and numerous articles on environmental justice and inequality, culture and environment, and urban and community health and activism. Her latest book is Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger.…

Tawahum Bige is a Łutselk’e Dene, Plains Cree poet living on unceded Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh territory. Bige has a B.A. in creative writing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Their land protection work against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion led them to face incarceration in 2020. Cut to Fortress is their debut poetry collection.…

Rasiqra Revulva is a multi-media artist, writer, poet, editor, musician, performer with the electronic duo The Databats, and sci-com (science-communication) advocate. She is the co-creator, developer and editor for The Puritan’s new Hybrid, an experimental new section. Her poetry has multiple dimensions across multiple art forms and various poetic forms. She has published two chapbooks, including Cephalopography.…

Tolu Oloruntoba lived in Nigeria and the United States before settling in the metro area of Coast Salish lands known as Vancouver with his family. He spent his early career as a primary care physician, and currently manages virtual health projects with organizations in British Columbia. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, while his debut chapbook, Manubrium, was a bpNichol Chapbook Award finalist. The…

Justene Dion-Glowa is a queer Métis creative, beadworker and poet born in Win-Nipi (Winnipeg) and has been residing in Secwepemcúl’ecw since 2014, where they work with Indigenous youth. They are a Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity alumni. Trailer Park Shakes is their first full length poetry book.

The poems in Trailer Park Shakes, while dreamlike and playful, bear unflinching witness to the workings of injustice—how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love.…