Victoria Festival of Authors has expanded from a two-person operation with a four-member board to a small but mighty team in 2026!
VFA’s Team
- Laura Trunkey – Festival Producer
- Samantha Beynon – Indigenous Curator
- Sandra Forsyth – Webmaster
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.
- Sandra Forsyth – Treasurer
- 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.
- Karen Munro – Director-at-Large
- Karen Munro is a reader, writer, and librarian living in Victoria, BC. Her work has appeared in Grain, Hunger Mountain, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere.
- 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 – Director-at-large
- 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.
Other Notable Members
- Meharoona Ghani – Honorary Advisor
- A robust team of support who wish to remain anonymous