ADÈLE BARCLAY is the recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award, The Walrus 2016 Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry and The Fiddlehead’s 2022 Fiction Contest. They are the author of If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood Editions, 2016), which won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Renaissance Normcore (Nightwood Editions, 2019).

STEPHANIE CHOU is a writer currently living in Vancouver. Her work has previously appeared in BOMB Magazine and has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Born in southern Alberta, MARLENE COOKSHAW worked for several years as editor of The Malahat Review. Her poems have won the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry. She has published six collections, five of them with Brick Books, most recently Mowing (2019). She lives in Sidney, BC.

DENNIS COOLEY has been active on the Prairies as poet, editor, critic and publisher. He has received lifetime achievement awards from the League of Canadian Poets and Manitoba Writers; Guild, and has published over 30 titles, including his latest: body works (University of Calgary Press, 2023), love in a dry land (Turnstone, 2024), gibbous moon (At Bay Press, 2021).

MICHELLE CYCA is a writer from Vancouver, and a member of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6. She is a senior editor with The Narwhal and a contributing writer to The Walrus, for which her columns received a 2024 National Magazine Award. Her work has also appeared in Maclean’s, Chatelaine, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian and Best Canadian Essays 2025.

HILARY FAIR is a writer from Ontario. Her work has been published in The New Quarterly and is forthcoming in Prairie Fire. Her essays have been short-listed for both the Edna Staebler Award and the CNFC/Humber Literary Review Nonfiction Contest. In 2021, she won the inaugural Amy Award for memoir.

ANDREW FRENCH is a queer poet who has published three chapbooks, most recently Buoyhood (Alfred Gustav Press, forthcoming 2025). Their poems have appeared in journals across North America and the UK. Beyond their writing, Andrew has talked to their favourite writers on Page Fright: A Poetry Podcast since 2019.

GRACE KWAN is a Malaysian-born sociologist and writer raised in ‘Vancouver,’ the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. A Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominee, their first full-length book The Sacred Heart Motel was published by Metonymy Press in November 2024.

Y.S. LEE is the winner of CV2 ’s 2022 Foster Poetry Prize. Her lyric essay ‘Tek tek’ was shortlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize, and her fiction includes the YA mystery series The Agency (Candlewick Press, 2009–14). Ying’s debut picture book, Mrs. Nobody, is now available from Groundwood Books (April 2025).

LISA LÓPEZ SMITH is a shepherd and mother in central Mexico. When not wrangling kids, rescue dogs or goats, you can find her working on her next novel. Her poems and essays have been published in over 50 literary journals and nominated for Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook was published by Grayson Books in 2021.

STEVEN MAYE teaches English at Capilano University. He holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago and is a former Poetry Editor of Chicago Review.

ADAM McPHEE is a writer who lives in Alberta. His fiction has been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize, and his book reviews have appeared in Exacting Clam, the Temz Review, Rain Taxi and elsewhere. His newsletter, Adam’s Notes, can be found on Substack.

SHANE NEILSON is a poet and physician from New Brunswick.

NOFEL is a Montréal-based poet and essayist writing in English and Arabic. His writing has been published by the League of Canadian Poets, and appears in Geist, Canadian Notes & Queries, Contemporary Verse 2, Plenitude Magazine and The Ex-Puritan, among others. Nofel was longlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize.

CHRISTIAN PAULISICH is a graduate student. He lives in Maryland and is originally from California. His poems have been published in, or are forthcoming from, Southeast Review, Salamander, Frontier Poetry, Literary Matters, Denver Quarterly and others.

LUKE PELLIZZARI is a Vancouver-based filmmaker and video editor. Outside of his professional work, photography is one of his great hobbies, and he mostly focuses on wildlife and fungi. He lives happily with his partner Julie and their dogs Haku and Snoopy.

TALIA PINZARI is a poet and public relations director from New England living in Austin, TX. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Salamander, SWWIM, The Shore Poetry, The Museum of Americana, Berkeley Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, Pangyrus, The Indianapolis Review, Ibbetson Street, Mulberry Literary and elsewhere.

NICHOLAS SELIG’s poetry has appeared in Contemporary Verse 2 and the League of Canadian Poets. He was awarded Nova Scotia’s Rita Joe Poetry prize in 2023. He is currently the editor-in-chief for The Miramichi Reader.

CHRISTINA SHAH lives in Vancouver and works in heavy industry. Her work was short-listed for 2021’s Ralph Gustafson Prize and was selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2023. She’s one-fifth of Harbour Centre 5. rig veda (Anstruther, 2023) was her first chapbook. if: prey, then: huntress is forthcoming (Nightwood Editions, Fall 2025).

KELLY SHEPHERD’s third poetry collection, Dog and Moon, has just been published with Oskana (University of Regina Press). His second collection, Insomnia Bird (Thistledown Press, 2018) won the 2019 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. Originally from Smithers, BC, Kelly currently lives and teaches on Treaty 6 territory, in Edmonton.

LIZ STEWART is a fiction writer from Minto, MB. She recently completed a BA in Writing at the University of Victoria, and now lives with her girlfriend in a car somewhere. Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025, trampset, Plenitude Magazine and carte blanche.

SANCHARI SUR is a PhD candidate in English at Wilfrid Laurier University. Their works appears in Al Jazeera, the Toronto Star, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, Joyland, Electric Literature and Daily Xtra, among others. A recipient of a Lambda Literary Fellowship and a Tin House residency, they are working on a novel-in-stories.

‘One Sunday in ’63’ is BIBIANA TOMASIC’s first published fiction. Leaf Press published her poetry collection So Large an Animal (2010), and the Alfred Gustav Press published Revolutions per Minute (2017) and Lybian Sea (2023). Her poetry has also appeared in EVENT, PRISM international, The Malahat Review and Canadian Literature, among others.

DALE TRACY is the author of the full-length poetry collection Derelict Bicycles (Anvil Press, 2022), several chapbooks, including Gnomics (above/ ground press, 2024) and Lines That Open (Surrey Art Gallery, 2023) and the monograph With the Witnesses (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). She is a faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

CHIEMEZIEM EVEREST UDOCHUKWU’s writing appears in Evergreen Review, Efiko, Lolwe, Jellyfish Review and Peatsmoke Journal. He won the EC Michaels Short Story Prize and has been a finalist for the Black Warrior Review Nonfiction Contest, the Quramo Writers’ Prize, the Nigerian NewsDirect Poetry Prize and the Dawn Project Competition.

ALPAY ULKU’s poetry has previously appeared in EVENT, as well as The American Poetry Review, The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review, and a personal essay was published in Plume. His first collection, Meteorology, was published by BOA Editions. He grew up in Calgary and lives in Samsun, on the Black Sea coast of Türkiye.

CARA WATERFALL is an Ottawa-born, Côte d’ Ivoire-based poet and storyteller. Her work navigates the complexities of identity, place and intergenerational memory. Her poems have appeared widely, including in Best Canadian Poetry, The Fiddlehead and CV2. She is the author of Radiant Wound (Unsolicited Press, May 2025).