Victoria Festival of Authors has expanded from a two-person operation with a four-member board to a small but mighty team in 2024!
VFA’s Team
- Laura Trunkey – Festival Producer
- Leroy Jack with Jennifer Manuel – Indigenous Curators
- Sandra Forsyth – Webmaster
- Alli Vail – Marketing and Social Media
Board
- Yvonne Blomer– President
- Yvonne Blomer (she/her) lives in Victoria, BC on Lək̓ʷəŋən territory. The Last Show on Earth, her fifth book of poetry was published with Caitlin Press in 2022. She was Victoria’s fourth poet laureate.
- Isabel Jones – Vice President
- Isabel Jones is a retired teacher-librarian who has lived and worked in Manitoba and BC, as well as in Australia, Singapore, and Germany. She is delighted to be discovering local writers and to contribute to the mission of the VFA as a volunteer author interviewer and now as a board member. Long ago, she was on the board of Prairie Fire Magazine. She feels privileged to be living in the traditional territory of the Lekwungan People on the beautiful west coast.
- Brianna Bock – Secretary
- Brianna Bock is an emerging author/playwright and journalist/theatre critic who has written for Edible Vancouver Island and The Martlet. Their work has been published in The Martlet, This Side of West and they have written/acted in Theatre SKAM’sPop-Up Theatre.
- Taunya Sawatsky – Treasurer
- Taunya Sawatsky is a Certified Financial Planner and works as a financial advisor with Edwards Jones Canada. Prior to this role, she worked for 12 years as a financial planner with Coast Capital Savings.
- Julian Gunn – Director-at-Large
- Julian Gunn is a queer and trans writer, artist, and instructor teaching English and Creative Writing at Camosun College. He has enjoyed many VFA events as an attendee and an instructor, joyfully incorporating festival authors’ voices into the classroom.
- Barbara Pelman – Director-at-large
- Barbara Pelman is a retired high school English teacher, and author of three books of poetry, with a fourth to be published by Caitlin Press in Fall 2023. Many of her poems have been published in literary journals and won contests. She assists Planet Earth Poetry Reading Venues, organizing workshops and retreats.
- Cynthia Woodman Kerkham – Director-at-large
- An award-winning and widely published poet, Cynthia Woodman Kerkham is the author of Good Holding Ground and the chapbook with feathers. She’s also co-editor of the anthology Poems from Planet Earth and a great believer in the inspirational value of festivals. She gratefully teaches, edits, writes and hikes on this beautiful land.
- Christine Walde – Director-at-large
- Christine Walde is an artist, poet, and academic librarian at the University of Victoria. Her artistic practice combines library and archival research with interests in artist books and multiples, experimental prose, poetry, visual poetry, performance, and the visual arts. Her writing has been published in print and online journals nationally and internationally. She is also the author of two previously published novels for young adults, The Candy Darlings and Burning from the Inside.
- Nancy Issenman
- Nancy Issenman, a Jewish, queer writer, lives on unceded Lekwungen territory. Her poems appear in Room, League of Canadian Poets, Scrivener Creative Review, a story in don’t tell: family secrets (Demeter Press) and a plaque with her poem in Alta Lake Park after winning the Whistler Poetry Pause prize, 2024.