Tammy Armstrong is the youngest narrative poet ever to be shortlisted for the Governor-General's award. Raised in the border town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Armstrong has lived in Vancouver, Halifax, and Fredericton, and travelled extensively in Europe, Mexico and Central America. Armstrong's writing appears frequently in Canadian and international literary magazines. A version of Bogman's Music, her first poetry collection, won the Alfred Bailey poetry prize, and was later a finalist for the Governor General's Award for poetry. Armstrong has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and has worked as an ESL instructor and waitress. She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Douglas Barbour lives in Edmonton. The author of several books of poetry and criticism, he was inducted into the City of Edmonton Arts & Culture Hall of Fame in 2003.
E.D. Blodgett is University Professor Emeritus with the Centre d'études canadiennes at the University of Alberta.
George Bowering is Canada's first poet laureate and an officer of the Order of Canada. He is the author of more than eighty books, the most recent of which include The Hockey Scribbler, Writing the Okanagan, and 10 Women. A native of British Columbia, he lives in Vancouver.
Tim Bowling is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Selected Poems and Circa Nineteen Hundred and Grief. He has also published four novels and two works of nonfiction. His work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Award, two Writers’ Trust nominations, and five Alberta Book Awards. Originally from Ladner, British Columbia, he now resides in Edmonton, Alberta.
Dennis Cooley is the deputy minister of justice for the Government of Yukon.
Jason Dewinetz is a writer, editor, typographer, printer, publisher, and educator originally from, and now living back in, the Okanagan Valley. He is the author of Clench (Gaspereau Press), Moving to the Clear(NeWest Press), The Gift of a Good Knife (Outlaw Editions), and In Theory (above/ground press). He runs Greenboathouse Press. Jason is currently an instructor in English, Creative Writing and Publication Design at Okanagan College.
ryan fitzpatrick is the author of two books of poetry and fifteen chapbooks, including Fortified Castles (Talonbooks, 2014) and Fake Math (Snare/Invisible, 2007). With Jonathan Ball, he edited Why Poetry Sucks: An Anthology of Humorous Experimental Canadian Poetry (Insomniac, 2014). He has participated in the literary communities of Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto. In Calgary, he was on the collective of filling Station magazine and was the organizer of the Flywheel Reading Series. In Vancouver, he earned his doctorate at Simon Fraser University, where he worked on contemporary Canadian poetry and space. In Toronto, he recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto Scarborough and was a co-organizer of the East Loft Salon Series with Rajinderpal S. Pal and Nikki Sheppy.
Gary Geddes has written and edited more than forty books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction and criticism and has received numerous literary awards, including the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence and Chile's Gabriela Mistral Prize. He is the author of two best-selling travel memoirs, The Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things and Sailing Home. He lives on Thetis Island, British Columbia.
Leslie Greentree is the author of the award-winning short story collection A Minor Planet for You. Her second book of poetry, go-go dancing for Elvis, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Leslie co-wrote the play Oral Fixations with her life partner Blaine Newton, which was produced in 2014 by Ignition Theatre. She has won CBC literary competitions for poetry and fiction, and has been shortlisted for Writer’s Guild of Alberta and Humber Creative Nonfiction awards
Michael Henry has researched plasters and plastered his way across Ontario for the past decade, plastering for Camel's Back Construction and Straworks. Michael he lives in Peterborough, Ontario.
Nancy Holmes is an award-winning poet and editor, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan. She also collaborates on eco art projects both locally and internationally.
Richard Hornsey is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University.
Laurence Hutchman teaches Canadian literature at the Université de Moncton, Edmundston. His most recent book is Beyond Borders.
E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) was born on the Six Nations Reserve near Brandford, Ontario, the daughter of George Johnson, a Mohawk chief, and Emily Howells, an Englishwoman. Often billed as "the Mohawk Princess," she spent a number of years touring Canada, the United States and England, giving dramatic readings of her work. She retired to live in Vancouver in 1909 and published Legends of Vancouver a couple of years before her untimely death in 1913. Her ashes are buried in her beloved Stanley Park.
Pauline Johnson published numerous storeis and poems, as well as six books, two of them posthumously: The White Wampum (1895), Canadian Born (1903), Legends of Vancouver (1911). Flint and Feather (1912), The Moccasin Maker (1913) and The Shagganappi (1913).
Born in Heisler, Alberta, Robert Kroetsch published his first novel, But We are Exiles in 1965, and his book The Studhorse Man (1969) won the Governor General's Award for Fiction. Throughout his career, he steadily elaborated his indelible mark on Canadian writing with his fiction, non-fiction, poetry, teaching, and scholarship.
Alice Major has published eleven books of poetry and a prize-winning collection of essays, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science. Recent awards include the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. She served as Edmonton’s first poet laureate, a city where she continues to live.
KIM MALTMAN is a poet, theoretical particle physicist, and occasional translator who has published five books of solo poetry, over two hundred papers in the scientific literature, and three books of collaborative poetry, most recently Box Kite, published in 2016. In addition to recent solo work which has appeared under a variety of heteronyms, he is involved, in collaboration with Roo Borson, in ongoing translations of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai and Song Dynasty poet Su Shi. Past honours include the CBC Literary Prize, and, with collaborators Roo Borson and Andy Patton, the Malahat Poetry Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and two National Magazine Award finalist appearances. Perhaps his most unusual literary credit is having served as consulting dog poetry editor for André Alexis’s novel Fifteen Dogs. He lives in Toronto with poet and collaborator Roo Borson. Baziju are currently at work on a new manuscript project called Short Moral Tales.
Colin Morton was born in Toronto, grew up in Calgary, and lives in Ottawa, where he is a freelance writer and editor. His poetry and fiction have appeared in diverse literary journals including Descant, The Fiddlehead, Arc, Grain, The Malahat Review, Ascent, and The North American Review.
He has performed his work with the word-music intermedia group First Draft and the jazz ensembles SugarBeat and Sonic Circle, and in the award-winning animated poetr
One of Canada's most eminent and respected poets, ERÍN MOURE is a translator from French, Spanish, Galician, and Portuguese, and she is the author of seventeen books of poetry. Moure has received the Governor General's Literary Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and the A. M. Klein Prize, and she has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Most recently, she has been shortlisted for the 2018 Kobzar Literary Award. She lives in Montreal.
Born in England, but raised in Red Deer, Alberta, P.K. Page was a Canadian poet and author of over 30 published books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays, children's books, and an autobiography. She was also a well-known visual artist, who exhibited her work as P.K. Irwin both in and outside of Canada. Her works are in permanent collections of National Gallery of Canada and Art Gallery of Ontario. P.K. Page spent the last years of her life in Victoria, British Columbia, where she died in January 2010.
Rajinderpal S. Pal was named "Best Local Author" by the readers of Calgary's Fast Forward magazine. He also won the Henry Kreisel Award for Best First Book for his critically-acclaimed poetry collection pappaji wrote poetry in a language i cannot read, which spent six weeks on the Calgary Herald bestseller list. He also has won the Calgary semi-finals of the CBC Radio Poetry-Face Of. Pulse has been nominated for both the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (an Albert Book Award) and the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize from the City of Calgary. He lives in Vancouver.
The former president of Calgary's Sage Theatre and former managing editor of filling Station magazine, he is presently on the Board of Directors of the Calgary Folk Fest and the Arts and Culture Committee of Calgary Foundation. He has participated in international arts festivals such as ArtWallah. Rajinderpal has published in literary magazines throughout North America, and is in translation in Brazil and Portugal.
Karen Solie is the author of three collections of poems, including Pigeon, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her poems have been published in North America, the U.K., and Europe. She lives in Toronto.
Born at Medicine Hat, Alberta, in 1959, Yvonne Trainer has become one of Canada's most distinctive young poets. A brilliant reader, she has presented her work to many appreciative audiences in the Prairies and Atlantic Canada, while her poems have appeared in a number of leading literary magazines in both Canada and the US. CBC Anthology broadcast a group of six poems in 1980, when she was still an undergraduate at the University of Lethbridge, editing Whetstone. She put out her chapbook, Manyberries, also in 1980, before moving on to the University of New Brunswick, where she received the MA degree in English and creative writing.
Tom Wayman's prolific writing career includes more than twenty poetry collections, three collections of critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction, and a novel. He won the 2013 Acorn-Plantos Award for his book Dirty Snow and has been shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award. In 2015, Wayman was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark, with a plaque on the city's Commercial Drive commemorating his championing of people writing for themselves about their daily employment. Since 1989 he has been based in the Slocan Valley in southeastern BC, where he is active in a number of community literary ventures. His website is www.tomwayman.com.
Christine Wiesenthal is a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.
The "Mama of Dada"
Poet, film-maker, educator, producer, and activist Sheri-D Wilson has 7 collections of poetry; her most recent, Autopsy of a Turvy World (2008, Frontenac House). Her last collection, Re:Zoom (2005, Frontenac House), won the 2006 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the CanLit award. She has 2 Spoken Word CDs (arranged by Russell Broom), and 4 award-winning VideoPoems: Airplane Paula (2001), Spinsters Hanging in Trees (2002), Surf Rave Girrly Girrl (2004), and The Panty Portal (2008), all produced for BravoFACT.
Awards Include:
CBC Arts Top Ten Poets in Canada (2009), ffwd Readers' Choice - Best Poet ( 2008, 2007), Global TV's Woman of Vision Award (2006), SpoCan Award (2005), Bumbershoot Heavyweight Title for Poetry USA (2003), Gold Award at the Houston Film Festival (2003), Three ACE awards (2003), AMPIA (2003, for best short or vignette), CBC Face-off (2002)
Reading Highlights:
Blue Met 2009 (Montreal), Voix d'Amériques 2008,'05 (Montreal), Bumbershoot 2003, '99, '92, '91, '89 (Seattle), Vancouver International Writers Festival 2002, '00, '95, '93, '90 (Vancouver), The World Poetry Bout 2002 (Taos, New Mexico), Poetry Africa 2001 (South Africa), WordFest 2008, 2000, '95 (Calgary, Banff), Harbourfront Reading Series 1993 (Toronto), Small Press Festival 1990 (NYC).
Other Highlights:
Women and Words, 2003-2007 (instructor), First
Jan Zwicky, an internationally recognized poet and scholar, has held appointments at numerous universities including Princeton, the University of Alberta, and the University of Victoria. She is the author of several books, including Alkibiades' Love: Essays in Philosophy.
