LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Lisa Baird (she/her) lives on the territories of the Attawandaron, also the treaty land of the Mississaugas of the New Credit and Dish with One Spoon territory (Guelph ON). Her book, “Winter’s Cold Girls” (Caitlin Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 Relit Award for poetry. www.lisabaird.ca

Ash Caton is a writer from Edinburgh, Scotland, where he performs poetry, hosts a literature podcast (Ear Read This), and works in a bookshop.

Nancy Daoust is a newcomer to the Canadian writing scene. Her writing often explores our relationship with nature and the place where we live. It is also influenced by her love of pop culture and music. A retired educator, she is an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets, belongs to the Sudbury Writer’s Guild and volunteers with Wordstock, Sudbury’s Literary Arts Festival. Nancy has been published in Terra North and was part of Sudbury’s storefront poetry project. Two of her pieces are published in Painted Voices, a chapbook about Sudbury’s General Hospital, and its RISK mural. She also has two poems in Sulphur XI, Laurentian University’s 2022 literary magazine, and her poem “so many words” won honourable mention in Dr. William Henry Drummond’s 2022 poetry contest.

Ashley David MFA/PhD, is an interdisciplinary and social practice artist who combines techniques and traditions from ethnography, theatre, community arts, poetry, film and digital media, visual arts, and scholarship to explore questions about community and inclusive place-making. Poetry, prose, and project-based work have featured widely, and she has performed and installed pieces across the U.S. and overseas. As Exquisite Knowing, she collaborates—in the role of consultant, mentor-teacher, and facilitator—with nonprofit organizations, universities, schools, and individuals to tackle issues related to social, economic, and environmental justice and to manifest missions and values as everyday inclusive practices. www.ashleydavid.com & www.exquisiteknowing.com

Dandy Decipher is a non-binary film photographer living in small town manitoba, on treaty 2 territory in what is sometimes called "canada". They love to wander along the river near their house, watching for unusual or delightful details to make photographs of. They enjoy experimenting with numerous aspects of analog photography, from simple double exposures to constructing pinhole cameras from matchboxes. They firmly believe that a photo is a collaborative effort between the photographer and the subject, rather than something that the photographer "takes", even if the subject is inanimate, like a tree or river. They strive to be mindful of this when out making pictures.

Annie Diamond is an Ashkenazi Jewish poet and breakfast enthusiast living and working on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires, sometimes called Chicago. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in No Tokens, Yemassee, Verklempt, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. @zanniediamond.

Salvatore Difalco is the author of 5 small press books. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her first chapbook, In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, was published by Alien Buddha Press. Her most recent chapbook, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, is available from Dancing Girl Press.

Jeffrey Dreiblatt is a poet, visual artist and volunteer firefighter. His poetry has appeared in Paddlers Press, The Dillydoun Review and New Feathers Anthology among many other journals. He lives, and fights fires, in Copake, New York.

Paula Eisenstein was recently a Toronto based writer but is now a rural New Brunswick based writer. Her novel Flip Turn was published by Mansfield Press in 2012. Some literary magazine publication credits include Descant, filling Station, The Rusty Toque and The Puritan.  Her most recent Amelia Earhart poems came into being thanks to the generous assistance of artsnb.

Ben Berman Ghan is a writer and editor living in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, where he’s a PhD student in English literature at The University of Calgary. He’s the author of the collection What We See in the Smoke (Crowsnest Books), and the novella Visitation Seeds (845 Press). His novel The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits is forthcoming with Wolsak and Wynn for spring 2024. His recent work can be found in Clarkesworld Magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, and The Temz Review You can find him @inkstainedwreck and inkstainedwreck.ca

Margaryta Golovchenko (she/her) is first generation Ukrainian settler-immigrant, poet, and critic from Tkaronto/Toronto. Her latest chapbook, Daughterland, was published by Anstruther Press in 2022. Her individual poems have appeared in talking about strawberries all of the time, Channel Magazine, Praisie Fire, Menacing Hedge, Long Con, and others. She has written literary and art criticism for a variety of publicatins.  She is currently a PhD student in art history at the University of Oregon, studying the representation of human-animal relationships in modern and contemporary art.

Amelia Gorman lives in Eureka where she spends her free time exploring forests and fostering dogs. Her fiction appears in Nightscript 6 and Cellar Door. Read her poetry in Penumbric, Vastarien, and Pinhole Poetry. Her chapbook, the Elgin-winning Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota, is available from Interstellar Flight Press.

Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people (Ottawa, Canada). Thanks to Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, and not-the-rodeo poets, she has work out/forthcoming in EVENT, Gone Lawn, One Art, Rust & Moth, & The New Quarterly. https://linktr.ee/nancyhuggett Twitter: @nancyhuggett  Instagram: @nanhug

Josh Humphrey’s poetry has appeared in other publications, including Lullwater Review, Paterson Literary Review, Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Talking River Review, Lips, Journal of New Jersey Poets, US1 Worksheets, Epicenter, Soundings East and Oberon.  Most recently, he had his first online publication in the Innisfree Poetry Journal.  Currently, he works as a Library Director in his hometown of Kearny, New Jersey, a job that inspires much writing.

Heather Jessen is a 2022 finalist for the inaugural Quagmire poetry contest, a 2021 finalist for the Ruminate broadside prize and the Atlanta Review poetry contest, and has poetry appearing or forthcoming in Poetry South, Connecticut River Review, and Pangyrus. A former resident of Australia, she lives in Connecticut and can be found on Instagram at @maxhj1 and Twitter at @hjessenwrites.

Wess Mongo Jolley is a Canadian novelist, editor, podcaster, poet and poetry promoter. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Performance Poetry Preservation Project, and is most well-known for hosting the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel podcast for more than ten years. His work has appeared in journals such as Off the Coast, Apparition Literary Magazine, PANK, The New Verse News, Danse Macabre, The Chamber Magazine, The Legendary, decomP, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, RFD, TreeHouse Arts, and in collections such as the Write Bloody Press book The Good Things About America. For the past six years, Mongo has been hard at work on his sprawling supernatural horror trilogy, The Last Handful of Clover. He describes the work as “an epic meditation on aging, loss, and regret.” The novel is currently being released serially on Patreon, Wattpad, QSaltLake, and as an audiobook podcast. Mongo writes and freelance edits full time from his home in Montreal, Quebec. Find him at http://wessmongojolley.com.

Heather C. Krueger (she/they) is a deep-hearted, queer poet whose work explores growing up on a farm, divorce, trauma and embodiment. Heather lives on Treaty 7 territory/Metis Nation Region 3, just outside Calgary, with her two teenagers, two kittens and one big, fluffy dog. She is currently enrolled in SFU’s The Writer’s Studio. Find her on IG @heatherckrueger

Kathryn MacDonald’s poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada, the U.S., Ireland, and England, as well as in anthologies. Her poem “Duty / Deon” won Arc Award of Awesomeness (January 2021).  “Seduction” was shortlisted for the Freefall Annual Poetry Contest edited by Gary Barwin and was published in Freefall (Fall 2020). She is the author of A Breeze You Whisper (poems) and Calla & Édourd (fiction), both published by (Hidden Brook Press 2011 and 2009 respectively). She is the co-author of The Farm & City Cookbook (Second Story Press 1995).

Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Atlas and Alice, Gigantic Sequins, Isele Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Plainsongs, Pleiades, Rust + Moth, West Trestle Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Under Memories of Stars, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (June 2023). She lives in California.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collections the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) and World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), and a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Josiah Nelson is an MFA student at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Existere, Vast Chasm Magazine, Queen's Quarterly, and Hunger Mountain Review. He lives in Saskatoon.

Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, Dalhousie Review, Lascaux Review, Kolkata Arts, Leere Mitte, untethered, Snakeskin Poetry, Quail Bell, Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Literary Yard, Gray Sparrow, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Beatnik Cowboy, PPP, Synchronized Chaos, New Verse News, Siren's Call, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit crit has appeared in CJFY, BeZine, Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, and The /t3mz/ Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.

Myna Wallin is a Toronto author and poet. She has had three books published: A Thousand Profane Pieces, poetry and Confessions of A Reluctant Cougar, a novel (both with Tightrope Books) followed by her most recent poetry collection, Anatomy of An Injury (Inanna Publications, 2018). Myna Wallin’s poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Vallum Magazine, The Quarantine Review, NōD Magazine, Sledgehammer Literary Magazine, the Miramichi Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and EVENT Magazine. Myna has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. Recently, her short story “Crackerjacks” won an honourable mention in Esoterica Magazine’s Inaugural Fiction Contest, and her poems were longlisted in the New Quarterly’s Occasional Verse Contest.  

K. R. Wilson is a Toronto-area writer. His novel Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia was long-listed for the 2022 Leacock Medal. His work has also appeared in The Temz Review, The Quarantine Review, Syncopation Literary Journal, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, and the flash fiction anthology This Will Only Take a Minute. 

Dave Wise struggled with talking as a kid so non-verbal communication became his focus. His first foray into the darkroom came at 3 years old. He left school at 16 and, unable to settle into regular employment, hitchhiked to France with the aim of joining the French Foreign Legion. He’s since wandered through over 80 countries, documenting his experiences using a variety of means including pinhole photography, film, poetry, and prose. His photos have featured in over 30 exhibitions, and his work has appeared in the same amount of books. In 1999 he founded the Medway art collective Dilute To Taste, and in 2002 created Urban Fox Press with Billy Childish, which published over 50 books by Medway creatives. From 2004 to 2006 he organized the Medway Independent Arts Festival with Zara Carpenter. In 2008 he founded Hakim & Slater Press, which continues to this day. Dave worked as a sports and travel journalist before emigrating to Canada in 2015. He enjoys marathons, and has won the 24 hour Canadian running Championships a couple of times. Running-induced vulnerability, as well as yogic breathing and the lowering of energy, plays a part in his creative process. He began painting in 2021 and had his first exhibition in this medium in May 2022 in New York State.