Notes on Editors and Contributors
Bert Almon was born in 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, a ravaged oil refining centre. He teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta. His latest book, A Ghost in Waterloo Station (Brindle and Glass) won him the City of Edmonton Book Prize and a second Alberta Book Award in Poetry.Madhur Anand’s poetry has appeared in several literary magazines across Canada and the US including The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, The New Quarterly, Interim and Room. Her poetry has also been anthologized in The Shape of Content: Creative Writing about Science and Mathematics and nominated for a Pushcart prize. Formerly a professor at Laurentian University, she now holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Ecological Change at the University of Guelph. Her award-winning research in the areas of ecological modelling, forest ecology, and conservation ecology has been published in several leading international journals.
Kemeny Babineau lives outside Brantford, Ontario with his wife and two daughters. He also edits an independent literary wag called The New Chief Tongue that appears courtesy of Laurel Reed Books. Babineau is not the author of his latest poetry collection VDB Wordlist which is published by BookThug.
Brian Bartlett of Halifax has published many collections of poetry, mostly recently The Watchmaker’s Table, The Afterlife of Trees, and Wanting the Day: Selected Poems, which won the Atlantic Poetry Prize. He has also edited two books of selected poems, Earthly Pages: The Poetry of Don Domanski and The Essential James Reaney. Since 1990 he has taught creative writing and literature at Saint Mary’s University.
Christian Bök is the author of Eunoia, a work of experimental literature, which has won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence.
Alanna F. Bondar teaches English and creative writing at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Her most recent article, “Ecofeminist Canadian Literature” appears in Teaching North American Environmental Literature (MLA 2008). Her poetry has appeared Canadian and American literary journals including Event, Grain, QAE, CV2, Dandelion, The Cormorant, TickleAce, Rampike, The New Quarterly, Qwerty, Public Works, and Wayzgoose.
Alison Calder is the author of one poetry collection, Wolf Tree, which won two Manitoba Book Awards. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.
Monique Chénier of Timmins, Ontario spent her early years in Sudbury and Falconbridge. She published Remembering Medusa Remembering with Your Scrivener Press in 2007, and was part of a three women YSP chapbook entitled NeoVerse in 1998.
Margaret Christakos, born in Sudbury, resident of Toronto, has published seven collections of poetry and one novel. Her collection Excessive Love Prostheses won the ReLit Award for Poetry, and her novel Charisma was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. Her books Sooner (2005) and What Stirs (2008) were shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She works part-time as an instructor of creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and with WIER (Writers in Electronic Residence). In 2004-5, she held a Canada Council Writer’s Residency at the University of Windsor. The poem included here is from Welling (Your Scrivener Press, forthcoming 2010).
Rhonda Collis is a fourth year writing student in the University of British Columbia Optional Residency MFA program. Her short fiction has been published in Room Magazine and On Spec Magazine. Her poetry has been published in The Antigonish Review and The Vancouver Review. She lives on Vancouver Island.
Jan Conn’s seventh book of poetry is Botero’s Beautiful Horses, Brick Books, 2009. She won a CBC Literary Prize for Poetry in 2003, and the inaugural (2006) Malahat Review PK Page Founders’ Award Poetry prize. Her paternal grandparents owned the resort Cromarty lodge in Bala, near the junction of Moon River and Lake Muskoka. She lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. www.janconn.com
Michael deBeyer is the author of two books of poetry: Rural Night Catalogue (2002) and Change in a Razor-backed Season (2005), published by Gaspereau Press. Born in Ontario, he currently lives and works in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Adam Dickinson teaches poetry and poetics in the English Department at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. He is the author of two books of poetry: Cartography and Walking (Brick Books 2002) and Kingdom, Phylum (Brick Books 2006) which was a finalist for the 2007 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. His work has appeared in literary journals and in anthologies such as Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets.
Kim Goldberg is a poet, author and journalist in Nanaimo, B.C. Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies around the world, including Macleans, Canadian Geographic, Prairie Fire, The Progressive and Istanbul Literature Review. Her latest collection, Red Zone, about urban homelessness, will be released fall 2009 from Pig Squash Press.
Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor and translator whose work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications. Her first collection of poetry, What if red ran out, was published in 2008. Poet and essayist
Maureen Scott Harris has published two collections of poems: A Possible Landscape (Brick Books, 1993), and Drowning Lessons (Pedlar Press, 2004), awarded the 2005 Trillium Prize for Poetry. In 2008 she won the Sparrow Prize for Prose from The LBJ (Reno, NV) and placed second in CV2’s 2-day poem contest. Harris lives in Toronto.
Cornelia Hoogland’s recent publications include The Malahat Review’s special issue “The Green Imagination” (Winter 2008) and Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, eds. Nancy Holmes and Don McKay (WLU Press, 2009). Hoogland has been shortlisted five times for the CBC Literary Awards, and her fifth book of poetry, based on the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, is titled Woods Wolf Girl. Hoogland is the founder and artistic director of Poetry London (www. poetrylondon.ca).
Karen Houle was born in Northern Ontario, and moved all over the major highlights: North Bay, Cochrane and Sudbury. This was before there were trees. She studied Biology at the University of Guelph, where she is now an Associate Professor of Philosophy. Her first book, Ballast, was published in 2001 by House of Anansi. Gaspereau published During in 2008.
Ross Leckie is the author of three books of poetry: A Slow Light (Signal Editions); The Authority of Roses (Brick Books); and Gravitiy’s Plumb Line (Gaspereau). He is Director of Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, Editor of The Fiddlehead, and Poetry Editor for Goose Lane Editions.
Jeanette Lynes is the author of five collections of poetry and one novel. She co-authored a chapbook, Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems, with Alison Calder in 2007. Jeanette is co-editor of The Antigonish Review.
Don McKay has published ten books of poetry, two of which have won the Governor General’s Literary Award. Strike/Slip won the 2007 Griffin Prize. The Muskwa Assemblage is his newest poetry title from Gaspereau. He lives in St. John’s.
Jane Munro’s fourth collection of poetry, Point No Point, was published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart. Her previous books include Grief Notes & Animal Dreams and Daughters, a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. She is the winner of the 2007 Bliss Carman Poetry Award.
Roger Nash is a past-president of the League of Canadian Poets. He’s authored seven books of poetry, three of philosophy. He has won a number of literary awards, including the Canadian Jewish Book Award (for In the Kosher Chow Mein Restaurant, Your Scrivener Press, 1996) and the Confederation Poets award (twice). For the past twenty years he’s taught environmental ethics at Laurentian University. He also writes short fiction, and has a story in the 2009 PEN / O. Henry prize stories anthology.
Ruth Roach Pierson, professor emerita of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, is the author of two books of poems, both published by Buschek Books of Ottawa: Where No Window Was (2002) and Aide-Mémoire (2007). The latter was named a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.
Sina Queyras is the author most recently of the poetry collections Lemon Hound and Expressway both from Coach House Books. She is also working on a novel titled, Autobiography of Childhood, from which an excerpt appeared in translation in Siècle 21 out of Paris. She has lived across Canada, in New Jersey, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Currently she lives in Montreal where she teaches and keeps a blog, Lemon Hound.
a.rawlings spent her formative years on Huron’s North Shore (east of Sault Ste. Marie). This northern environment plays a fundamental role in her poetics; indeed, her first book, Wide slumber for lepidopterists, was both set in and dedicated to Northern Ontario. Her current work-in-progress, EFHILMNORSTUVWY, investigates the relationship between text, ecology, textual ecologies, and linguistic formation—set within a theoretical, closed North Shore ecosystem.
Poet Lisa Robertson was born in Toronto and lived for many years in Vancouver, where she worked with several artist-run organizations, including Kootenay School of Writing and Artspeak Gallery. Her books include, XEclogue, Debbie: An Epic, The Weather, The Men, Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip and Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. University of California Press will publish R’s Boat in 2010. She has worked as a freelance arts and architecture critic and a teacher since leaving the bookselling business in 1995, and has held residencies at California College of the Arts, University of Cambridge, Capilano College, University of California Berkeley, University of California San Diego, and American University of Paris.
Erin Robinsong is an interdisciplinary artist working in text and performance. She is a recipient of the Irving Layton award for poetry, and is co-curator of The Twilight Bike-In movie theatre and Tertulia, a literary salon. Originally from coastal BC, Erin lives in Toronto where she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and working on a book of poems which investigate the life of homonyms.
Mari-Lou Rowley has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Suicide Psalms (Anvil Press, 2008), nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award, and CosmoSonnets (Jack Pine Press, 2007). Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada and the US—and on the Canadian Association of Physicists website. In 2008 she participated in the Poetic Ecologies conference in Brussels. She lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Armand Garnet Ruffo’s roots extend to the Biscotasing Branch of the Sagamok First Nation and to the Chapleau Fox Lake Cree. He is the author of Grey Owl: the Mystery of Archie Belaney (Coteau Books) and most recently wrote and directed A Windigo Tale, a feature film due to be released in 2009. He currently teaches Aboriginal literature at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Robyn Sarah’s eighth poetry collection is Pause for Breath (Biblioasis, 2009). She has also published two short story collections and a book of essays on poetry. A selected poems in French translation, Le tamis des jours, came out in 2007. She lives in Montreal.
Olive Senior lives alternately in both Jamaica and Canada. She has been writer in residence or visiting international writer at universities in Canada, the West Indies, Britain and the United States. Her poetry books include Talking of Trees (1986), Gardening in the Tropics (1994; winner of the F.J. Bressani Literary Prize), Over the Roofs of the World (2005; finalist for the Governor General’s Award and Cuba’s Casa de la Americas Prize) and Shell (2007; finalist for the Pat Lowther Award). Her short story collections include Summer Lightning (1986; winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize), Arrival of the Snake-Woman (1989)and Discerner of Hearts (1995).
John Terpstra is the author, most recently, of Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems. An earlier work, Disarmament, was short-listed for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. He lives in Hamilton, where he works as a writer and carpenter.
Rhea Tregebov is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, most recently (alive): Selected and new poems. She is currently completing her seventh collection, tentatively entitled The Gardens of the Antarctic. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
Rita Wong is the author of sybil unrest (Line Books, 2008, co-written with Larissa Lai), forage (Nightwood, 2007, which received the Dorothy Livesay Poetry prize), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998, which received the Asian Canadian Emerging Writer Award). She teaches at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
