An annual celebration of writers and literature
Carla Funk was born and raised in Vanderhoof, one of the earliest Mennonite settlements in British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of the memoir Every Little Scrap and Wonder, which was a finalist for the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. She has also written five books of poetry and is the former poet laureate for the City of Victoria.…
Susan Olding’s debut collection, Pathologies: A Life in Essays, was selected by 49th Shelf and Amazon.ca as one of 100 Canadian books to read in a lifetime. Her essays, fiction, and poetry appear widely in literary journals and anthologies, and her work has won a National Magazine Award, the Edna Staebler Prize for the Personal Essay, and other honours.…
M.A.C. (Marion) Farrant is the award-winning author of seventeen works of fiction, memoirs, and two plays. She has published eight books with Talonbooks, the most recent being her trio of miniature fiction: The World Afloat (2014), The Days (2016), and The Great Happiness (2019). She lives in North Saanich, British Columbia.…
Darrel J. McLeod is Cree from treaty eight territory in Alberta. Darrel was a chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and executive director of education and international affairs with Assembly of First Nations. He holds degrees in French Literature and Education. Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity is his second memoir following the events in his Governor General’s Literary Award-winning Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age.…
Glenn Dixon is living the dream in double time, combining his passions for writing and playing rock ‘n’ roll into the novel, Bootleg Stardust. In fact, the protagonist in the novel, Levi Jaxon, has become his avatar. Dixon plays guitar in a Calgary rock band that has recorded under the name Downtown Exit, the name of the ’70s band in the book.…
Dallas Hunt is Cree and a member of Wapsewsipi (Swan River First Nation) in Treaty 8 territory in northern Alberta. His creative work is published in Contemporary Verse 2, Prairie Fire, PRISM international, and Arc Poetry. His first children’s book, Awâsis and the World-Famous Bannock, was published through Highwater Press in 2018, and was nominated for several awards.…
Hiromi Goto is an emigrant from Japan who gratefully resides in Lekwungen Territory. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book, Canada and Caribbean Region, and was co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Other titles include The Kappa Child, Half World and Hopeful Monsters. Her first graphic novel, Shadow Life, was published in March of 2021 with First Second Books.…
Patrick Friesen has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays, stage and radio plays, and has co-translated, with Per Brask, five books of Danish poetry, including Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments by Ulrikka Gernes. In January 2020, he released a CD, Buson’s Bell, consisting of composed and improvised music, with text. …
Terence Young recently retired from teaching English and creative writing at St. Michaels University School. He is the author of several books: The Island in Winter, shortlisted for the Governor General’s literary Award for poetry and the Gerald Lampert Award; Rhymes With Useless, a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed award for short fiction; After Goodlake’s, a novel and winner of the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize; Moving Day, nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize; and The End of the Ice Age, a collection of short fiction.…
SJ Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Sindu holds an M.A. in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a PhD in English from Florida State University. Her first novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and the Golden Crown Literary Society Award for Debut Fiction, was selected by the American Library Association as a Stonewall Honor Book, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the VCU First Novelist Award.…
