Ruth Daniell is a writer, artist, and performer originally from Prince George, BC. She now lives in Vancouver, where she teaches speech arts and writing at the Bolton Academy of Spoken Arts and runs Swoon, a literary reading series on love and desire. She holds a BA (Honours) from the University of Victoria and her MFA from the University of British Columbia. Her writing appears in literary journals across North America, including The Malahat Review and Room, and has been twice longlisted for the CBC Canada Poetry Prize. Recently, she has been honoured in Contemporary Verse 2 as a runner-up for the 2013 Young Buck Poetry Prize, by inclusion on the shortlist for The London Magazine’s 2014 Poetry Competition, on CBC as the winner of the 2014 Shakespeare Selfie Challenge, and through One Throne Magazine as a nominee for the Pushcart Prize.
Jane Warren has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and undergraduate degrees from University of Calgary (BEd) and McMaster University (BPE). She has published two-dozen short stories and poems in Canada and the UK and has served on the editorial collectives of literary magazines. Currently she lives in the Netherlands where she works as an editorial consultant.
The Caring Day, a collection of short stories, was published in 2014. Her Middle Grade novel (under revision) received an honorable mention in the S.C.B.W.I.’s Undiscovered Voices 2014 competition, as well as a top 100 finish in Amazon’s 2013 Breakthrough Novel Award (YA).
Originally from England, Elizabeth Mason spent seven years in Berlin before moving to Vancouver to pursue an MFA. She now lives in London. She writes and blogs about places and their pasts, modern ruins, and vanished heydays.
No Man Land in Malahat Review, 163 (2008); Blühende Landschaften‚ in Litro, 125 (2013)
Futures Past‚ and New States‚ in Litro online (2014) (http://www.litro.co.uk/2014/11/new-states/)
Karim Alrawi is a novelist and playwright. In addition to his several plays for stage, radio, and television, he is the author of two children’s books, The Mouse Who Saved Egypt (2011) and The Girl Who Lost Her Smile (2000) and, most recently, of the novel Book of Sand (2015). His awards include the John Whiting Award for Best Stage Play, and the Samuel Beckett Award for the Performing Arts. A former editor of the magazine Arabica, he has taught at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, The American University in Cairo, and at the University of Iowa’s international writing program.
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.
