Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist originally from Pakistan and now settled in Canada. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. She works as Coordinating Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine, and is Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of Ottawa-based collaborative writing group VII. Her project Reth aur Reghistan is a multidisciplinary exploration of folklore from Pakistan interpreted through poetry and sculpture. She holds an MA in English from the University of Waterloo. MONUMENT is her first book.
Assiyah Jamilla Touré is a multidisciplinary artist of West African descent. They were born and raised on Skwxwú7mesh land and lived for many years in Kanien’kehà:ka territory (Montreal) and are now based on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Wendat (Toronto). In 2018 their chapbook feral was published by House House Press. Autowar is their first full-length collection.
Louise Bernice Halfe – Sky Dancer was raised on Saddle Lake Reserve and attended Blue Quills Residential School. Her first book, Bear Bones & Feathers, received the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award and was a finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award, the Pat Lowther Award and the Gerald Lampert Award. Her book, Burning in This Midnight Dream, won the Saskatchewan Book Award and the Raymond Souster Award, among other awards. Halfe was awarded the Latner Writers Trust Award for her body of work in 2017, and the 2020 Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. She is currently the first Indigenous person serving as Canada’s Poet Laureate. Halfe’s newest books are awäsis – kinky and dishevelled, and a new edition of Burning in This Midnight Dream, from Brick Books, 2021.
Charlie Petch is a disabled/queer/transmasculine person who resides in Toronto/Tkaronto. Petch’s full-length spoken-word vaudeville play Mel Malarkey has toured all over Canada. They have several handsome chapbooks and Late Night Knife Fights was published with LyricalMyrical Press. A musician, lighting designer, spoken word artist, award-winning playwright and host, Petch was the 2017 Poet of Honour for Spoken Word Canada, winner of the Golden Beret lifetime achievement in spoken word with The League of Canadian Poets and founder of Hot Damn it’s a Queer Slam.
Alayna Munce grew up in Huntsville, Ontario, and has spent most of her adulthood in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto. Alayna began working at Brick Books in 2007, and became a member of Brick’s editorial collective a few years later. Her work has appeared in numerous Canadian literary journals. In 2003, she won second prize in the CBC Literary Awards’ travel writing category. In 2004, her work was featured in the anthology Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets. Her first novel, When I Was Young and in My Prime (Nightwood Editions, 2005) was nominated for the Trillium Book Award and appeared on the national bestseller list. Alayna has also worked as a freelance fiction editor. In recent years, books she has edited have won and been nominated for many national and regional awards, including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, The Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Trillium Book Award.
Don McKay was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, raised in Cornwall, and was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971. He taught creative writing and English for 27 years in universities including the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick.
In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. McKay is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Long Sault (1975), Lependu (1978), and Apparatus (1997). He has twice won the Governor General’s Award, for Night Field (1991) and Another Gravity (2000). In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006).
Mckay has also made a wide impression as a teacher and editor. He is the co-founder of Brick Books, one of Canada’s leading poetry presses, and was editor of the literary journal The Fiddlehead from 1991 to 1996. He has participated in the Sage Hill Writing experience in Saskatchewan and he is Associate Director for poetry at the Banff Centre for the Arts Writing Studio. He has edited many books by fellow poets, including Ken Babstock, George Elliot Clarke, Tim Lilburn, Barbara Colebrook Peace, and Michael Redhill.
Stan Dragland is a Canadian novelist, poet and literary critic. A longtime professor of English literature at the University of Western Ontario, he is most noted for his 1994 critical study Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9, which played a key role in the contemporary reevaluation of the legacy of poet Duncan Campbell Scott in light of his role as deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs.
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Dragland was educated at the University of Alberta and Queen’s University. While teaching at Western, he was the co-founder of the poetry publisher Brick Books and the literary magazine Brick.
His first novel, Peckertracks, was a shortlisted finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. He won the Newfoundland and Labrador Rogers Cable Non-Fiction Award in 2005 for his memoir Apocrypha: Further Journeys, and he was a shortlisted finalist for the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award in 2007 for Stormy Weather: Foursomes.
Michael Crummey is the author of twelve books of poetry and fiction. He was the inaugural winner of the $50,000 Writers’ Trust Fellowship in recognition of “exceptional creative ability and outstanding promise” in his work to date. His most recent novel, The Innocents, won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Little Dogs: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2017. He lives in St. John’s.
Maureen Hynes lives in Toronto. Her first book of poetry, Rough Skin (Wolsak and Wynn, 1995), won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian. Her second collection, Harm’s Way (Brick Books, 2001), was followed by Marrow, Willow (Pedlar Press, 2011) and then The Poison Colour (Pedlar Press, 2015), which was a finalist for both the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Award and Raymond Souster Award. Sotto Voce was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and was a finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Awards Society awards. She is poetry editor for Our Times magazine. Sotto Voce is Maureen’s fifth poetry collection.
Karen Solie’s first collection of poems, Short Haul Engine, won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize, the ReLit and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second, Modern and Normal, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals. She is a native of Saskatchewan and now lives in Toronto.