Marie Powell is the author of more than 40 published children’s books, including the young adult fantasy Last of the Gifted: Spirit Sight (Summer 2020) and Water Sight (Fall 2020). She holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her award-winning short stories and poetry appear in such literary magazines as Sunlight Press, SubTerrain, Room, and Transition. She has been fiction-nonfiction editor of the literary magazine Spring, has edited Windscript for teen authors twice, and is judging the 2020 Exporting Alberta award for the Canadian Author’s Association–Alberta branch. Marie lives on Treaty 4 land in Regina, Saskatchewan, and her writing workshops and readings are popular across the province.
John Mavin has taught creative writing at Capilano University, Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, with New Shoots (through the Vancouver School Board), and at the Learning Exchange in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A past nominee for both the Aurora Award and the Journey Prize, his short fiction has been translated, studied, and published internationally. His new book, Rage, will release with Thistledown Press this fall.
I’m an editor and staff writer at Lion’s Roar (formerly the Shambhala Sun) and I’m the editor of three anthologies: Right Here with You: Bringing Mindful Awareness into Our Relationships; Buddha’s Daughters: Teachings from Women Who Are Shaping Buddhism in the West; and All the Rage: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger and Acceptance. My writing has been featured in a wide range of publications including Prairie Fire, the Antigonish Review, the Best Women’s Travel Writing series, The Best Buddhist Writing series, and In the Company of Animals: Stories of Extraordinary Encounters. I also have two forthcoming picture books: Baby’s First Book of Canadian Birds (Nimbus Publishing) and The Day the Buddha Woke Up (Wisdom Publications)
Brought up on Bainbridge Island, Washington, Justin left a marketing career in New York City to earn a joint MFA in Creative Writing & Theatre from UBC, choosing in part to its proximity to where his Squamish relatives live.
Justin’s screenplay The Skins Game (in development, summer 2020) with Curiosity Pictures and Really Real Films, with Jessica Harmon to direct. The project was selected as participating project of 2019 Netflix-Banff Diversity of Voices Initiative, was a top-ten finalist for the 2019 Canadian Film Fest, and a 2018 Whistler Film Festival / Praxis Screenwriting Lab project, among many other selections.
His interdisciplinary play, So Damn Proud, selected for play development by Native Voices at the Autry Museum (LA) premieres in Vancouver in February 2021. Justin’s pilot, Boundary Bay, has been presented in stage readings with scores of Indigenous actors across Canada through his involvement with Testify Indigenous Law and Arts Collective. LNG, a play version adapted from the Boundary Bay pilot, enjoyed a first draft workshop at University of California, San Diego, organized by professor Julie Burelle and her UCSD Indigenous Theatre classes in the spring of 2017. His newest play, The Traveler, is in development with the Vancouver theatre’s Arts Club Emerging Playwrights Unit (2020).
An artist resident at Skwachàys Lodge in Vancouver, Justin has worked on theatre and film projects in LA, NYC, the Bay Area, Seattle, and Vancouver in a variety of capacities, since 1998. With a long history working for arts organizations and institutions, Justin was a teaching artist for Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth theatre, and the special appointee for the Bachelor of Performing Arts at Douglas College in 2019.
Katherin Edwards, former maid, gardener and racehorse groom is currently employed as a home support worker and floral designer. A two-time winner at Eden Mills for poetry, her work has been published in The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review and ARC poetry magazine. A chapbook, The Sky Was 1950 Blue, created in collaboration with artist Melissa Haney was published by JackPine press in 2016, and her first full length poetry book, A Thin Band, was published by Radiant Press in 2018. Katherin’s nonfiction can be found in the anthology In This Together: Fifteen Stories of Truth and Reconciliation, and in 2016 she was longlisted for CBC’s short fiction contest for “The Sound of his Fall.” She has also won the Malahat Review’s Far Horizon Award for fiction. She lives in Kamloops.
I’m a writer, teacher and designer living in Vancouver, Canada. You can read about my books at www.angelhorn.com. In 2014 I was the Writer in Residence at Vancouver Public Library. In 2015, I was nominated for the BC Book Prizes and chosen to tour the province to promote BC Books. In 2017, I was selected for the TD Canada Children’s Book Week Tour. I have also been nominated for the White Pine Award and the CLA Award. I won the Westchester Award for Audacious. Audacious was included in CBC’s list of 100 YA Books That Make You Proud to be Canadian. A poem from Capricious was chosen for the 2014 Poetry in Transit Program. Pandas on the East Side was chosen as an Ontario Library Association Best Bet for Junior Fiction in 2016 and nominated for the Red Cedar Award, The Chocolate Lily Award, the Diamond Willow Award and the Myrca Award. I live in Vancouver with my family and two chickens.
Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt is a Montreal-based writer, editor, and translator. Her work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Malahat Review, Room, Matrix, Cosmonaut’s Avenue, Riddle Fence, (parenthetical), and elsewhere.
Rage, Thistledown Press (Fall, 2017)
