Jean Van Loon, MFA 2013

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‚ 120^th 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. 3^rd 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.

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.

jttownley.com

andrea bennett is a National Magazine Award–winning writer and editor and the author of two travel guides, one book of poetry, and, most recently, the essay collection Like a Boy but Not a Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood Outside the Gender Binary (Arsenal Pulp Press), a CBC Books’ pick for the top Canadian nonfiction of the year, and one of Autostraddle’s best queer books of 2020.

andreabennett.ca

Publications

Canoodlers [poetry] Nightwood Editions, 2014

Roslyn Muir is an award winning screenwriter, story editor and producer. Her script, The Birdwatcher, an indie micro-budget feature in post production was funded by Telefilm; starring Camille Sullivan, Gabrielle Rose, and Garwin Sanford; director, Siobhan Devine, producer, Ines Eisses, Executive Producer, Alex Raffe. Her MOW thriller script, Anatomy of Deception, starring Natasha Henstridge, was produced in 2013 by Odyssey Media and Reluctant Witness starring Mia Kirshner, and Driven Underground in 2014. Her fourth MOW, Evidence of Truth, goes to camera in 2015. Roslyn’s feature comedy, Unravelled, is a winner of the Praxis Screenplay Competition and her drama Hold the Sky, has development funding from Corus Made with Pay and BC Film. She wrote and produced the short film, OMG, starring Gabrielle Rose, which premiered at VIFF in 2012, at Palm Springs in 2013, and was broadcast on CBC. Roslyn also story edits feature films, has worked on the W Network production, Smart Cookies, and analyzed scripts for Movie Central. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.

www.roslynmuir.com

Brandy’s highly anticipated first memoir, What Doesn’t Kill Us, chronicles her journey with an aggressive, rare breast cancer at the age of 31. The book reflects on the parallels between her experiences with cancer and the subsequent demise of her marriage, and her American father’s and Vietnamese mother’s trauma and survival during and after the Vietnam War. The book crosses borders, from rural, Amish-country Pennsylvania, where she’d grown up, to Vancouver, where Brandy lived with her parents, husband, and two young children while enduring aggressive chemotherapy, radiation, and a double mastectomy.

Brandy is currently working on a second memoir, which delves into the Vietnam War stories her parents and half-sister told while she was growing up and excavates deeply buried secrets of loss and regret. She is represented by Anne McDermid & Associates Literary Agency.

She lives in Vancouver with her husband, Anton, her three children, Chloe, Mylo, and Moxie, and their two cats, CBB and Zircon.

Brandyworrall.com