Sandy Pool hails from Erin, Ontario and is a holder of the prestigious Killam scholarship in poetics at the University of Calgary. Her first book Exploding Into Night was short-listed for the 2010 Governor General’s Award for poetry and Undark: An Oratorio was short-listed for an Alberta Book Award for Poetry and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Pool’s impressive background in many areas of theatre performance, creative writing, and libretto crafting lend a Euripidean sensibility and dramatic force to the latter marvel.
Originally from Western Canada, Lorri Neilsen Glenn now lives in Halifax and spends her summers in Saskatchewan. She served as Poet Laureate for Halifax from 2005-2009 and she has producing award-winning scholarship and creative nonfiction. Her popular workshops on memoir and life writing have been held across Canada, particularly Atlantic Canada, as well as in Ireland, Greece, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand. Her critically acclaimed forays into poetic memoir form include the poignant Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry, which explores Neilsen Glenn's awareness of poetry as a model of secular compunction that serves as a form of prayer.
Wanda John-Kehewin defines herself as a mixed-blood Cree writer originally from Kehewin, Alberta. Raised on a reservation with only pencils and paper as her creative outlet, she attributes that hard, simple life with opening her imagination to using words to paint pictures of social justice, realism, and love. John-Kehewin uses writing as a therapeutic medium for understanding and responding to the near decimation of Native culture, language, and tradition.
Born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan, and currently an inhabitant of the Okanagan “wild” in Kelowna BC, and self-identified in the company of poet George Stanley as a staunch “aboutist,” Sharon Thesen is indeed a literary rara avis whose score of witty, entertaining and insightful poetry books are balanced by solid editorial and academic contributions, including two editions of The New Long Poem Anthology, a Governor-General’s Award-winning edition of Phyllis Webb’s poetry (The Vision Tree), and with co-editor Ralph Maud, two books of correspondences between the poet Charles Olson and book designer Frances Boldereff — the most recent being After Completion: The Later Letters of Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff.
Sandra Ridley grew up in Saskatchewan and currently resides in Ottawa, Ontario, where she facilitates poetry workshops at Carleton University, the Tree Reading Series, the Ottawa Public Library, and the City of Ottawa. Her first book of poetry, Fallout, was a finalist for the 2011 Ottawa Book Award and won the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing. Her second book Post-Apothecary was a finalist for the ReLit and Archibald Lampman Awards.
