Kathryn Para is an award-winning, multi-genre writer with a MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in Grain,Room of One’s Own, Geist, Sunstream, and Vancouver Review. She is the 2013 Winner of Mother Tongue Publishing’s Search for the Great BC Novel Contest. Her novel Lucky was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2014. Her stage play, Honey, debuted in 2004. She has also written, directed and produced short films. She lives in Gibsons, BC.
Nazanine Hozar was born in Tehran, Iran, and lives in British Columbia, Canada. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in the Vancouver Observer and Prairie Fire magazine. Aria is her first novel.
Laura Trunkey’s writing has been published in journals and magazines across Canada. Her short fiction has been anthologized in the bestselling collection, Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow and her non-fiction has been anthologized in Hidden Lives. The Incredibly Ordinary Danny Chandelier, Laura’s children’s novel, was a starred selection in the Canadian Children’s Book Centre‚ Best Books for Kids & Teens. Her short fiction collection, Double Dutch, is forthcoming from Anansi in spring 2016. Laura lives in Victoria with her husband, photographer Mike Andrew McLean, and their son Angus.
Publications:
The Incredibly Ordinary Danny Chandelier, Annick Press, 2008 Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow (anthology), D&M, 2010 Hidden Lives: Coming out on Mental Illness (anthology), Brindle & Glass, 2013 Double Dutch, Anansi, forthcoming 2016
Carol N. Shaben is an award winning Vancouver-based author and recipient of two National Magazine Awards, including a gold medal for Investigative Journalism. In 2008 she was nominated as Canada’s Best New Magazine Writer. Her first book, Into the Abyss, sold to Random House Canada within two hours and has since become a national bestseller. The book has been published in the United States, UK, Brazil, Spain and throughout the Spanish speaking world. It was also optioned for film in 2013.
Into the Abyss received the 2013 Edna Staebler National Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the BC Book Prizes Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.
Victoria Bell is an editor and writer living in Ottawa. She graduated from the UBC Optional Residency Master of Arts in Creative Writing program in 2010, with a focus on the novel. She is represented by Jennifer Udden of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Find her on Twitter: @VictoriaMBell
Born in Calgary, Alberta Jessica is nevertheless a devoted British Columbian and proud University of British Columbia alumni – both from Secondary Education and Creative Writing. After completing her MFA in Creative Writing and Theatre in 2006, Jessica Cullen continued to teach high school English and Drama in Vancouver and then went on to teach in Nanaimo, before returning to Calgary to complete her Master of Architecture degree at the University of Calgary in 2011. She has since gone on to work and study both in the Netherlands, and Australia. This wanderlust and multidisciplinary background was fuelled by an intense curiosity in the world around her, resulting in both extensive travelling and multidirectional creative pursuits.
As a trained architect, high school teacher and writer, she brings to bear a wide and interdisciplinary scope to her work, melding playful sensitivity with a devotion to the development of designs with firm conceptual grounding and social purpose.
Currently working for Mecanoo Architects, in Delft, the Netherlands, Jessica has not published since her time in the Creative Writing department at UBC but reminds all those that have experienced success in the publishing world, that she is available for any design work they might require – cabins on Salt Spring Island, backyard writing workshops, or Vancouver Special renovations and refurbishments.
Jean is an Ottawa native, married to another one, mother of two more and grandmother of three Ottawa granddaughters. An unrepentant throwback in the age of mobility.
After a career as an executive in the federal public service and as head of a national industry association, Jean plunged into the world of creative writing. Hooked by the end of her first workshop in short fiction at Carleton University, she followed up with more. Gradually she added to her Honours BA in Political Science (Carleton) and MA in Political Studies (Queen’s) a graduate diploma from the Humber School of Writing and an MFA in Creative Writing through UBC’s Optional Residency Program.
She now indulges in poetry as well as short fiction and is a happy member of the active and supportive writing community in Ottawa.
Publications:
Where Are You Going?” Room, Issue 37.1, Winter/Spring 2014.
Stardust, Queen’s Quarterly, re-publication Summer 2013, as part of the quarterly‚ 120th anniversary celebrations; Journey Prize Stories 19, McClelland and Stewart, November 2007; originally, Queen’s Quarterly, Summer 2006.
Account of a Trip to Tuscany Together With Certain Useful Italian Phrases, non-fiction, Prairie Fire, Volume 33, 2, Summer 2012. 3rd place in annual competition for creative non-fiction.
Noah’s Dive, The New Quarterly, Volume 109, Winter 2008.
Pest Control, Ottawa Magazine (sister publication to Toronto Life), July 2007.
Gracie‚ Luck, The New Quarterly, Volume 98, Spring 2006.
Thunder Lake, winner of The Summer Place fiction contest, The New Quarterly, Issue 91, Summer/Fall 2004.
Life List, The Dalhousie Review, Issue 84.1, Spring 2004. 
Other Recognition
Public reading from Pest Control‚ at Library and Archives Canada, September, 2007, sponsored by Ottawa Magazine and the Ottawa International Writers Festival.
Beholden, finalist in the Malahat Review, 2005 Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction.
Pest Control, finalist in The Writer’s Union of Canada 2001 Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers
Other Publications
My poetry and reviews have appeared in Queen’s Quarterly, Bywords Quarterly Journal, Bywords.ca, blogspotTRUCK, Room,Arc Poetry.
Rhea lives in Port Coquitlam, BC. While in UBC’s MFA program she focused on screen writing (Sara Graefe), poetry (Susan Musgrave) and writing for children (Maggie De Vries). Her stories and poetry have appeared in a collection of anthologies, both Canadian and US. She has had award nominations; including the Rhysling and Canadian Aurora award. Her most recent work is out in Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories and Tesseracts 17. Her first Zombie story appeared in Dead North, a Canadian Zombies anthology. She has no shame and will obviously write anything if she can get away with it. She also teaches at an alternative high school in Coquitlam.
J.T. Townley has published in Collier, Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and other places. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MPhil in English from Oxford University, and he spent time at Fundación Valparaíso, Spain as a fiction fellow. A Pushcart Prize nominee and Fulbright Scholar, he teaches at the University of Virginia.
Susan Olding is the author of Pathologies: A Life in Essays, winner of the Creative Nonfiction Collective’s Readers’ Choice Award for 2010. Her writing has appeared widely in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies across Canada and the United States, including TNQ,The L.A. Review of Books, The Malahat Review, Maisonneuve, and the Utne Reader, and has won a National Magazine Award, two Edna Awards, and many more. She lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.
