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.
Bob Wakulich received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia in 1999. He also holds a BFA in Writing with a Film Studies Minor from the University of Victoria (1996), a BA in Sociology from Lakehead University (1977), and he attended the Banff School of Fine Arts Summer Writing Workshop in 1979 and 1980. His short stories, poems, and commentaries have appeared in a number of journals, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies in Canada, the US, and Europe, as well as on CBC Radio and in cyberspace. He currently lives in Cranbrook, British Columbia.
Keri Korteling is a writer, editor and teacher with an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her work appears in Red Rock Review 38. She lives with her family in Vancouver, B.C.
A prolific writer, Aaron Bushkowsky is a Vancouver-based playwright, film-writer, poet, novelist, and educator. His plays have been produced across Canada, the US, and Europe, and have received 9 Jessie Richardson Theatre nominations, more than any other Canadian playwright, winning two for Outstanding Original Play. He has been a resident playwright at The Vancouver Playhouse, Rumble Theatre, and Touchstone Theatre. Aaron has written over 20 plays and received almost as many professional productions across Canada, the US, and Europe. Aaron also spent a year at the Tarragon Theatre playwrights unit in Toronto and is a graduate of the prestigious Canadian Film Centre in film-writing. His film-scripts have received many options and he is currently working to complete The Ancients, a feature about down-on-their luck university Greek Literature professors and their stunningly beautiful daughters who get them into trouble. Aaron’s short film The Alley was nominated for five Leo awards and won the National Screen Institute’s Drama Prize. Aaron teaches writing at Vancouver’s highly regarded theatre school Studio 58, and at Kwantlen University, Langara College, and Vancouver Film School. He has several published works, including two books of poetry Mars is for Poems (Oolichan Books) and Ed and mabel go to the moon (Oolichan Books) which was nominated for a BC Book Award for Poetry. His published drama includes Strangers Among Us, The Waterhead and other plays, My Chernobyl, all published by Playwrights Canada Press. His first book of fiction was a collection of short stories The Vanishing Man, published by Cormorant in 2005. Curtains for Roy, his first novel, was published in 2014. It’s a dark comedy about the Vancouver theatre world which garnered rave reviews from critics and made two Top Ten Book (2014) lists for Vancouver novels and subsequently nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award,Canada’s oldest literary award and only award for humour writing. Aaron received his MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 2002. Aaron also heads Solo Collective Theatre, a professional Vancouver theatre company and has been an influential dramaturge, mentor, and teacher to hundreds of new West Coast writers and students. Aaron is represented in theatre by Marquis Entertainment, Toronto.
Ken McGoogan has survived shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, chased the ghost of Lady Franklin from England to Tasmania, and placed a memorial plaque in the Arctic overlooking Rae Strait. He is the author of a dozen books, among them four bestsellers about Arctic exploration: Fatal Passage, Ancient Mariner, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and Race to the Polar Sea (all HarperCollins Canada). His awards include the Writer’s Trust of Canada Biography Prize, the Canadian Author’s Association History Award, the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography, and the Pierre Berton Award for History. Ken made a cameo appearance in the prize-winning docudrama based on his book Fatal Passage, and he also turns up in Franklin’s Lost Ships. For two decades, Ken worked as a journalist, moving from The Toronto Star to The Montreal Star and The Calgary Herald, where he served as books editor and literary columnist. His recent books include How the Scots Invented Canada, Celtic Lightning, and 50 Canadians Who Changed the World, and an ebook edition of his novel Kerouac’s Ghost. Ken has served as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, and is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and the Explorer’s Club. He has worked as a writer-in-residence in Fredericton, Dawson City, and Hobart, Tasmania, and he teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Toronto (Continuing Studies) and in the MFA program at University of King’s College in Halifax. Ken sails in the Northwest Passage as a resource historian with Adventure Canada. In 2017, he will publish Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of Arctic Discovery.
