JOHN WALL BARGER is the author of six books of poems. His book of essays on poetics and film, The Elephant of Silence, came out in spring 2024 with LSU Press. He’s a contract editor for Frontenac House, lives in Vermont, and lectures in the Writing Program at Dartmouth College.

DAVID BARRICK is the author of the poetry collection Nightlight (Palimpsest Press, 2022), as well as two chapbooks. His poems have been published in Grain, Best Canadian Poetry 2024, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Arc and other literary journals. He teaches at Western University in London, ON.

JOE BAUMANN is the author of four collections of short fiction, most recently Where Can I Take You When There’s Nowhere to Go (BOA Editions), and the novels I Know You’re Out There Somewhere (Deep Hearts YA, 2023) and Lake Drive (Rebel Satori Press, 2023). He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fic-tion. joebaumann.wordpress.com.

NICHOLAS BRADLEY is the author of two books of poetry: Rain Shadow (Univer- sity of Alberta Press, 2018) and Before Combustion (Gaspereau Press, 2023). His poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry 2024. He lives in Victoria, in ləkʷ̓əŋən territory.

MICHELLE POIRIER BROWN is a Cree Métis writer. Her poetry appears in numerous magazines including Arc, CV2, Grain, The Greensboro Review, Plenitude, The Puritan, untethered and Vallum. Michelle’s debut book You Might Be Sorry You Read This was published by the University of Alberta Press in 2022. www.skyblanket.ca.

MORGAN CHARLES is a writer based in Ottawa. Her writing has appeared in The Ex-Puritan, The Malahat Review, EVENT and Reader’s Digest. Her essay ‘ Plagued’ won The Fiddlehead’s Creative Nonfiction Contest and was nominated for a National Magazine Award (2021). Morgan is currently completing her MFA in UBC’s Creative Writing Program.

NEIL GRIFFIN is an award-winning poet and essayist. His work lives in The Narwhal, The Tyee and on CBC Books (as well as dwelling in the unsearchable archives of various extant and extinct literary journals). His website, which is rarely updated, is www.neilcgriffin.com.

BRETT JOSEF GRUBISIC is the author of five novels, including My Two-Faced Luck (Now or Never Press, 2021) and Oldness; or, the Last-Ditch Efforts of Marcus O (Now or Never Press, 2018). He resides on Salt Spring Island, BC.

TEYA HOLLIER (she/her) is a graduate of York University’s creative writing program. Her work has recently appeared in The Soap Box Press, Grain, Room and Verses Magazine. She is the 2022 recipient of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers (fiction). Hollier lives in Toronto and is currently working on her first novel.

MARK ANTHONY JARMAN is the author of Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, 19 Knives, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. He edits fiction for The Fiddlehead and co-edits a new magazine, Camel. He edited Best Canadian Stories 2023, and Burn Man, his selected stories, was The New York Times 2024 Editors’ Choice.

JÓNÍNA KIRTON, a Red River Métis and Icelandic poet, was 61 when she received the 2016 Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, was released in 2022 with Talonbooks.

MICHAEL LAKE is a writer and bookseller living in rural Nova Scotia, where he runs a small bookshop out of a former church.

MELISSA LAM is a second-generation Canadian and a graduate of SFU’s Writer’s Studio. Born in Toronto, she now lives in Vancouver, where she writes, teaches, and plays with her husband and son.

ALEX LESLIE has published two collections of poetry, The things I heard about you (Nightwood, 2014) and Vancouver for Beginners (Book*hug, 2019), shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Award and winner of the Western Canada Jewish Book Award, and two collections of short fiction, People Who Disappear (Freehand, 2012) and We All Need to Eat (Book*hug, 2018), shortlisted for a BC Book Prize.

ANNICK MACASKILL’s poetry collections include Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024). Her fiction has previously appeared in The Ampersand Review, Plenitude and Canthius, among others. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax) on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq.

STEPHEN MEISEL is a writer in Atlanta, GA. His fiction and reviews have ap- peared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House and The Southern Review of Books. His email is meiselstephen@gmail.com.

KHASHAYAR ‘KESS’ MOHAMMADI  (they/them) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer and translator with two poetry collections from Gordon Hill Press, a collaborative project, G (Palimpsest Press) and Daffod*ls (Pamenar Press). Their translation of Ghazal Mosadeq’s Andarzname (Ugly Duckling Presse) and their collection Book of Interruptions (Wolsak and Wynn) are forthcoming in fall 2025.

MONICA NATHAN is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Barren Magazine, The Feathertale Review and other publications. She is a Tin House alumni and a recipient of Diaspora Dialogue’s mentorship program. She is a contributing editor at Barren Magazine, an advisor for the Festival of Literary Diversity, and is currently working on her first novel.

MEREDITH QUARTERMAIN’s poetry books include Lullabies in the Real World (2020), Vancouver Walking (2005, winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize) and Nightmarker (2008), all from NeWest Press, and Matter (2008) and Recipes from the Red Planet (2010), from Book*hug. From 2014 to 2016, she served as Poetry Mentor in the SFU Writer’s Studio program.

AVERY QURASHI is a recent graduate of the UBC English Department’s MA program and currently works as an English instructor for international students.

NATALIE RICE is the author of the poetry collection Scorch (2023), published by Gaspereau Press. Her second collection will be published by Gaspereau in 2025. Her poems have appeared in Terrain.org, The Dalhousie Review, The Malahat Review and elsewhere. She lives in Nova Scotia.

TOSH SHERKAT (they/them) is a Persian-Doukhobor settler-of-colour born on Sinixt territory (Nelson, BC). They are an MFA candidate studying poetry at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan) on Syilx territory. Their writing has appeared in filling Station, carte blanche, Terrain.org and others, and is forthcoming at Grain.

YAEL TOBÓN is a Mexican writer and poet based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). Admitted initially into med school, they are currently enrolled in an honours program in English and Creative Writing with a minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality. Concerned with the echo of what has been left unsaid, they write about those forgotten corners of the memory, the tender process of loving and the marvelous mundane.

AMI XHERRO is a poet, translator and scholar working across English, French and Albanian. She is the author of Drank, Recruited (Guernica Editions, 2023), which was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. She is a co-founder of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective, which attempts to push the practices of translation beyond the tongue and further into the body.