TANYA BELLEHUMEUR-ALLATT is the author of the critically acclaimed Peacekeeper’s Daughter: A Middle East Memoir (Thistledown, 2021) and Chaos Theories of Goodness (poetry, Shoreline Press, 2022). Her collection of essays, Carrying War, will be published by Dundurn Press in Spring 2026. Also forthcoming is The Hospitality of Trees (poetry, Shoreline Press, 2025). tanyaallattbellehumeur.com.

AIDAN CHAFE is a poet and educator. His poems have appeared in CV2, EVENT, The Fiddlehead and PRISM international. He lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver).

JODY CHAN is a poet, grief and death worker, and community organizer based in Toronto/Tkaronto. They are the author of three books of poetry, sick (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), impact statement (Brick Books, 2024) and madness belongs to the people (Brick Books, forthcoming in 2026).

DOUGLAS COLE has published eight poetry collections, including The Cabin at the End of the World (Unsolicited Press, 2024), winner of the Best Book Award in Urban Poetry. His novel The White Field (Touchpoint Press, 2020) won the American Fiction Award. He has been nominated eight times for a Pushcart Prize and nine for Best of the Net. douglastcole.com.

QURAT DAR is the author of Non-Prophet (icehouse poetry, 2025), for which she received the inaugural Claire Harris Prize. She was the City of Mississauga’s third Youth Poet Laureate and a Canadian Individual Poetry Slam National Champion. Qurat’s poems have appeared in Arc, Room, Augur and across the TTC network.

ADAM ELLS is a Vancouver-based writer of literary fiction. Much of their work is set in northern British Columbia, where they grew up. Their work has appeared in Hermine Annual and Plenitude Magazine.

BROOK HOUGLUM teaches writing and literature at Capilano University. Her chapbook Anthronoise was published by above/ground press in 2024 and another chapbook, Inventory, is forthcoming. She lives with her family on unceded Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəyə̓m and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ lands.

JESS HOUSTY (’CÚAGILÁKV) is a parent, herbalist and land-based educator from the community of Bella Bella. They live and thrive in their Heiltsuk homelands surrounded by the generational abundance of both human and non-human kin. Jess’s debut poetry collection Crushed Wild Mint was published by Nightwood Editions in 2023.

DANIELLE HUBBARD lives in Kelowna, BC, where she works as the CEO of the Okanagan Regional Library. Her poetry has appeared in Grain, Geist, Room and CV2, among other places. When not writing, Danielle spends much of her time swimming and exploring the Okanagan.

ALEX KITT is an emerging writer from Red Deer, residing in Vancouver. He was the winner of The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award in 2023 and received the 2024 National Magazine Award for Fiction.

KATHRYN MacDONALD has published in Humana Obscura, Amethyst Review, Dust, The High Window, Pinhole Poetry and Room, and her reviews have appeared in FreeFall and The Temz Review. She is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon (Glentula Press, 2024), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems (HBP, 2011) and Calla & Édourd (HBP, 2009). kathrynmacdonald.com.

MEZI is a Vancouver-based poet, pho- tographer and Zen student. His work appears or is forthcoming in The Malahat Review, filling Station, Plenitude, The Inflectionist, Beyond Queer Words and elsewhere. He is also the author of Medellín (2017), a chapbook of photo-poetry for the benefit of refugees. www.mezi.site.

ROSALIE MORRIS is a writer and editor based in British Columbia. Her work can be found in The Malahat Review, Room, The Fiddlehead, Indie Is Not A Genre and various dark corners of the internet.

LESLIE PALLESON’s (she/her/hers) work has been published in The Dalhousie Review, The Antigonish Review, filling Station, Room, Descant, Prism Online, The Cape, and has been short-listed and long-listed for various literary awards. She is the winner of the 2022 subTerrain Lush Triumphant Literary Award for Fiction and a 2024 Alberta Magazine Awards silver medal.

MARGUERITE PIGEON writes poetry, fiction and reviews. She’s published four books, including The Endless Garment (Buckrider Books, 2021), a long poem that unravels her lifelong preoccupation with fashion. She is currently at work on a memoir of her childhood in Blind River, northern Ontario.

DORA PRIETO is a Vancouver-based poet and a 2025–27 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her debut collection, Girl Tejido, is forthcoming with House of Anansi (April 2027). Her poems have appeared in Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Capilano Review and more. She is also co-translating JAWS by Xitlalitl Rodríguez Mendoza and is a member of El Mashup Collective.

MARIA SABA is a writer and storyteller in Persian and English. Her novella The Se- cret of Names won the 2023 Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction. Saba’s story collection My First Friend was an Iowa Short Fiction Award semi-finalist, and the title story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won Scoundrel Time’s Editors’ Choice Award. Born and raised in Iran, she now lives in Ottawa.

ELLIE SAWATZKY is the author of None of This Belongs to Me (Nightwood Editions, 2021). Her poems have appeared most recently in The Walrus, Canadian Literature and SAD Mag. She lives in Vancouver, where she works as an editor and poetry teacher. Find her at elliesawatzky.com and @elliesawatzky.

LEAH SCHNURR lives in Ottawa, where she writes very slowly. Her poetry has appeared in CAROUSEL, The Pinch, SWWIM, Mockingheart Review and The Windsor Review. You can find her at @leahschnurr.bsky.social.

KEVIN SHAW lives in Ottawa. His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, CV2, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review and elsewhere. He’s received Arc’s Poem of the Year award and the grand prize in the PRISM international Poetry Contest. His debut poetry collection, Smaller Hours, was published by icehouse press (Goose Lane Editions) in 2017.

DANIEL SNEEP is a Vancouver-based street photographer who is drawn to the geometry, colour and rhythm of city life. He seeks to document moments of human expression and connection in the context of the urban environment.

RUSSELL THORNTON’s essay in this issue is from a book of recently completed creative non-fiction called The Tree of My Only Address. His collection Two Songs: Selected Poems 2000–2025 is forthcoming in early 2026 from Harbour Publishing. He lives in North Vancouver.

ALEX TRNKA is a writer and editor who was born in Newfoundland and lives in Toronto.

MARK TRUSCOTT’s third book, Branches (Book*hug, 2018), won the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Ampersand Review, Antiphony, Columba, Dialogist, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review and elsewhere. marktruscott.ca.