AMIRAH AL WASSIF’s poems have appeared in several print and online publications including South Florida Poetry Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, Meniscus, Chiron Review, Hunger, Writers Resist, and others. Amirah also has a poetry collection, For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate (Poetic Justice Books & Arts, 2019), and a children’s book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories (2020).

MANAHIL BANDUKWALA is a visual artist and writer. Her most recent work is a collaborative piece with Liam Burke titled Orbital Cultivation (Collusion  Books, 2021). She is Coordinating Editor for Arc and Digital Content Editor for Canthius. She is a member of VII, an Ottawa-based creative-writing collective. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

RITA BOUVIER is a Métis writer from Saskatchewan. Her third book of poetry, nakamowin’sa for the seasons (Thistledown Press) won the 2016 Saskatchewan Book Awards’ Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award. Rita’s poetry has appeared in literary anthologies, musicals and television productions, and has been translated into Spanish, German and Cree-Michif. Her home community is sakitawak, or Île-à-la-Crosse, situated on the historic trading and meeting grounds of the Cree and Dene peoples.

JOSEPH A. DANDURAND is a member of Kwantlen First Nation located on the Fraser River east of Vancouver, and is Director of the Kwantlen Cultural Center. He has just completed his residency as the Storyteller in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library. He has published 13 books of poetry, including: I Want (Leaf Press, 2015), Hear and Foretell (BookLand Press, 2015), The Rumour (BookLand, 2018), SH:LAM (The Doctor) (Mawenzi Press, 2019) and The Corrupted (Guernica Press, 2020). His book of short stories and plays for children, The Sasquatch, the Fire, and the Cedar Basket, was published by Nightwood Editions in 2020.

TIFFANY S. DANG is an award-winning illustrator currently residing in the outskirts of Toronto. She constantly tries to merge the line between traditional and digital media to create dynamic and emotional work for editorial, packaging and narrative projects. When she’s not drawing, she can be found designing or reading.

JAMES DUNNIGAN is the author of two chapbooks, Wine and Fire (Cactus Press, 2020) and The Stained Glass Sequence (Frog Hollow Press, 2019). Winning second prize in CBC’s Quebec Writing Competition with ‘Open Bay’ (2014), he has also been featured in Maisonneuve, CV2, Lantern Magazine and Graphite Publications, among others.

RYAN EAVIS is a 35-year-old from Cape Breton, NS. As well as an emerging poet, he is a stonemason, jazz musician and a recent graduate from Dalhousie University with a BSc in Psychology.

KIERAN EGAN lives in Vancouver. His chapbook Among the Branches was published by The Alfred Gustav Press in 2019. He was short-listed for the Times Literary Supplement Mick Imlah Poetry Prize in 2017, and his poems have appeared in Canadian, US and UK magazines. 

PATRICK GRACE is a queer writer from Vancouver, where he works as an elementary school teacher and moonlights as Managing Editor for Plenitude Magazine. Recent poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review. His debut chapbook, Dastardly, was published in 2021 with Anstruther Press.

BRIAN HENDERSON is a Governor General’s Award finalist for Nerve Language (Pedlar Press, 2007) and a finalist for the Chalmers Award for Sharawadji (Brick Books, 2011). He is the author of 13 books of poetry, including Unidentified Poetic Object (Brick, 2019), long-listed for the Raymond Souster Award, and a new book, unfinishing, forthcoming from MQUP. He is a co-editor of the Laurier Poetry Series.

ROBERT HOGG is a retired English professor and organic farmer who now devotes his life to writing in Eastern Ontario. He has published five books of poetry, three chapbooks, and his work has appeared in over 70 periodicals. Two chapbooks, Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn and Ranch Days—the McIntosh, appeared in 2019. Forthcoming titles include Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; Amber Alert; Not to Call It Chaos—The Vancouver Poems; and Oh Yeah—More Poems.

MJ HOLEC graduated from UBC with an MA in English Language and Literatures in 2019, and since then she has been working as a writing coach teaching English to high school students. She hopes to pursue a PhD in Creative Writing, but for now MJ enjoys writing, painting and reading.

MICHAEL JANAIRO is a writer living in upstate New York. He earned an MFA in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a BSJ from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. His Filipino family name is pronounced ‘ha NIGH row.’ He blogs at michaeljanairo.com.

ALEX JENNINGS is a retired Foreign Service brat who was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Paramaribo (Surinam), Tunis (Tunisia) and the US. He lives and works in New Orleans.

ANNA LING KAYE is a writer, editor and columnist on CBC Radio. Her fiction has been short-listed for the PEN Canada New Voices Prize and the Journey Prize, and received the 2021 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award.

AMANDA LEDUC is the author of The Centaur’s Wife (Random House Canada, 2021) and Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space (Coach House Books, 2020), which was short-listed for the 2020 Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, ON, where she serves as Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD).

MIKE MADILL has worn many different hats, including as a social worker, computer analyst and home contractor. His poetry has been published in literary magazines across Canada, including The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead and The New Quarterly, and he was short-listed for FreeFall’s 2019–20 Poetry Contest. This is his first time in EVENT.

LEVI MASULI, based in the Philippines, works on sound and text. His works can be peeped at levimasuli.com.

REBECCA PĂPUCARU’s “Yentas” won The Malahat Review’s 2020 Novella Prize, and her short fiction has recently appeared in Grain. She was awarded the 2018 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry for The Panic Room (Nightwood Editions, 2017), which was also a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize and long-listed for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. This is her second appearance in EVENT.

REBECCA PENG is a writer, furby enthusiast and multimillionaire on Neopets. She lives with a cat named Bug.

AL REMPEL’s books of poetry are Undiscovered Country (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2018), This Isn’t the Apocalypse We Hoped For (Caitlin Press, 2013) and Understories (Caitlin, 2010). He has a chapbook, Behind the Bladed Green, forthcoming in 2022 with The Alfred Gustav Press. His videopoem collaborations have been screened internationally. He can be found at www.alrempel.com.

JAY RITCHIE is the author of Cheer Up, Jay Ritchie (Coach House Books, 2017) and has an MFA from UMass Amherst. His work has been performed on CBC Radio, at the Newmarket National 10-Minute Play Festival, and at the Phi Centre in Montreal.

BEN ROBINSON is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent chapbooks are Keeps on Running (The Alfred Gustav Press) and Dept. of Continuous Improvement (above/ground press). He has only ever lived in Hamilton, ON, on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. He is @bengymen on Twitter.

ROB TAYLOR is the author of Strangers (Biblioasis, 2021) and three other poetry collections. He is also the editor of What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood Editions, 2018) and Best Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis, 2019). He teaches creative writing at Simon Fraser University.

CONNOR THOMPSON is an actor and writer from Toronto. His fiction has appeared in TL;DR Press, X-R-A-Y, Interstellar and Flyover Country. One time he was in a Kia commercial with Paul Anka. Find him at @cpethompson.

SARAH TOTTON’s fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Nature and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She was named a Regional Winner (Canada & the Caribbean) in the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition, and her debut collection, Animythical Tales, was published in 2010 by Fantastic Books.

P.C. VANDALL is the author of four collections of poetry: Something from Nothing (Writing Knights Press, 2013), Woodwinds (Lipstick Press,2013), Matrimonial Cake (Red Dashboard, 2014) and The Blue Moth of Morning (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2021). She lives on Gabriola Island, BC, with her husband and two children.

BEN von JAGOW is a writer, poet and photographer from Ottawa living in Basel, Switzerland. His work has appeared in literary journals such as Amsterdam Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, Newfoundland Quarterly and The Literary Review of Canada, among others. He was long-listed for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. For more of Ben’s work, visit benvj.com.

JAMES WARNER’s poems have been appearing for many years in magazines in Canada and abroad. He lives in Nova Scotia.

ANDREW WEI was born in Syracuse, NY, and holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas. His poetry has previously appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review and fields.

BRANDON WINT is a poet, spoken word artist and multi-disciplinary collaborator based in western Canada. As a performer and educator, he has toured Canada extensively, and has shared his work in Jamaica, Australia, Latvia, Lithuania and the US. Divine Animal (Write Bloody North, 2020) is his debut collection of poetry.