Notes on Contributors

Born in Winnipeg, ARTHUR ADAMS ON has spent his entire life contributing to the educational and cultural community in Manitoba. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Bird Beast and Lover, all of which he also illustrated. In addition to being a teacher and writer of poetry, Arthur is well known as a visual artist in the community. He has exhibited extensively as a painter and printmaker and his art reviews and critical essays on local and contemporary art have appeared in many publications over the years.

MARION AG NEW writes fiction and nonfiction; her essays have appeared in Best Canadian Essays and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. This essay is part of a collection that recently received support from the Ontario Arts Council. She lives and writes in Shuniah, Ontario, in an office overlooking Lake Superior.

GEORGE AMABILE has published ten books and has had work in over 100 national and international venues, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, Botteghe Oscure, The Globe and Mail, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Saturday Night, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review and Canadian Literature.

TAMMY ARMSTRONG has published two novels and four books of poetry, most recently The Scare in the Crow and the upcoming chapbook “The Varying Hare” (Frog Hollow Press). Her work has recently won the iYeats International Poetry Prize, Geist’s Postcard Story Contest, and has been short-listed for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards and The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Prize. In autumn 2018, she will be a Fellow at the International Writers’ and Translators’ House in Latvia. She currently lives in a lobster fishing village on the south shore of Nova Scotia.

DAVID ARNASON is a Winnipeg writer and a senior scholar in the department of English, Film and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.

JAGTAR KAUR ATWAL lives and writes in Cambridge, ON and has recently started painting, images that reflect her life experiences. She has been published in Room, The New Quarterly and in the anthology “Love Me True” (All Lit Up Press).

JODY B ALT ES SEN is an archivist and poet in Winnipeg. Last summer, a suite of her poetry was shortlisted for the 2016-2017 Gwendolyn MacEwen/Exile Poetry Prize.

SANDRA BIRDSELL began publishing in 1982 in literary journals such as dandelion and Writers News Manitoba. She is the author of nine books, an editor and an advisor at the Humber School of Writing. In 2010, she became a Member of the Order of Canada. She lives in Ottawa.

DI BRANDT’S acclaimed and award-winning poetry titles include questions i asked my mother, Agnes in the sky, Now You Care and Walking to Mojácar, with French and Spanish translations by Charles Leblanc and Ari Belathar. Di Brandt is a former poetry editor of Prairie Fire and was recently appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of Winnipeg.

J. M .( JOAN) BRIDGE MAN is a graduate of Oak River Collegiate and the University of Manitoba. She was around when Prairie Fire was an idea, at Writers News Manitoba. For the last thirty years, she has been writing from the Fraser Valley.

ERNA BUFFIE’S debut novel, Let Us Be True (2015), was nominated for the Margaret Laurence Fiction Prize, and her short stories have appeared in Room, The Vagrant Review of New Fiction and other journals. An award-winning writer and filmmaker, she lived in Montreal and Halifax for more than twenty years, then returned to her hometown, Winnipeg, in 2010.

RACHEL BUR LOCK is a poet and book merchant living in Winnipeg. She recently helped research and curate an exhibit on Manitoba’s athletes in the First World War. She has a Master’s in English from Concordia University.

CO NY ER CLAYTON has two chapbooks: The Marsh es (& co collective, 2017) and For the Birds. For the Humans. (battleaxe press). Her work has been published widely in Canada and the US, including The Maynard, In/Words, Bywords, Transom and phafours press. In 2017, she won Arc’s Diana Brebner Prize. Find her on Facebook @ConyerClayton for news on her poetic endeavours and collaborations.

DENNIS COOLEY is currently working on“them use sings ,” a collection of poems that includes “they come down with.” Two titles, “the bestiary” and “cold-press moon,”are forthcoming.

An Officer of the Order of Canada, LORNA CR OZ IE R has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry four times, receiving it for Inventing the Hawk. She has been the guest of literary festivals all over the world, and this March was the winner of China’s Chen Si Ang International Award for Poetry in Translation. Her most recent book is What the Soul Doesn’t Want, and this fall, “God of Shadows,” a collection of prose poems, will be published by M&S. Born in Saskatchewan, she lives on Vancouver Island with writer Patrick Lane, two cats, two turtles and many fish.

JONATHAN DY CK is a Winnipeg writer who also works as an illustrator and designer. He has an MA in English and Film Studies from the University of Alberta and is currently at work on his first chapbook.

VICTOR EN NS’ s poems have previously appeared in Prairie Fire, including “Courage” and “Reading Pablo Neruda” from his manuscript “Music for Men Over Fifty: Songs of Love and Surgery.” His poems have also appeared in CV2, dandelion, subTerrain, Rattle and Voices, published by the Lake Winnipeg Writers’ Group. He lives in Gimli.

J. ROBERT FERGUSON is a transplant from Nova Scotia to Winnipeg. His poetry has most recently appeared in filling Station, The Dalhousie Review and The Winnipeg Free Press.

CLARISE FOSTER is a poet, freelance poetry editor and Editor of CV2. She lives and works in Winnipeg.

HANNAH FOULGER is a British Canadian theatre artist and writer from Winnipeg. Her disability poetry has been published in Matrix and performed in Sick + Twisted theatre’s “Lame Is… cabaret.” Her plays “Clink” and “The Bar Scene” have been produced at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

PATRICK FRI ES EN has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays, has written stage and radio plays, and has co-translated, with Per Brask, five books of Danish poetry. His new book of poems, songen, was published in 2018 with Mother Tongue Publishing.

GREGORY GRACE has published four books of poetry as well as work in numerous literary and theological periodicals. Gregory is also a visual artist and a retired United Church ordained minister.

NEILE GRAHAM was born in Winnipeg but currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Her publications include three full-length poetry collections, most recently Blood Memory; a spoken word CD entitled She Says: Poems Selected & New; and poems in various magazines, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and The Malahat Review. Two of her earliest published poems appeared in Prairie Fire. She has two new collections scheduled for 2019.

TREVOR GR AU MANN is a Winnipeg writer and musician who converses deep into the night with astonishing people. His work has previously appeared in CV2, and he holds a BA in English from the University of Winnipeg. He writes here with the generous support of the Winnipeg Arts Council.

EYA DONALD GREENLAND lives in Toronto, where she owns a small gallery devoted to the metal art of her late husband. Eya attends the University of Toronto where she recently completed a specialist degree in Italian. She has written one book, entitled 30 Pieces of Silver: The Art of Ivaan Kotulsky.

KRISTJANA GUNNARS is a writer, author of several books of poetry, fiction, short fiction, essays and academic articles. Her latest publication is the chapbook Snake Charmers (Above/Ground Press), and in fall 2018 the chapbook “At Home in the Mountains” will be released from Junction Press. She is Professor Emerita of the University of Alberta, and is now living on the Sunshine Coast of BC, pursuing a career as a visual artist.

GRANT GUY is a Canadian poet, writer and playwright. He has over 100 poems and short stories published internationally. He has books published: Open Fragments, On the Bright Side of Down, Bus Stop Bus Stop, Blues For a Mustang and The Life and Lies of Calamity Jane. His plays include an adaptation of Paradise Lost and the Grand Inquisitor section from The Brothers Karamazov. He was the 2004 recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s Award of Distinction and the 2017 recipient of the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Difference Award.

CHRISTINA HAJJ A Risa first-generation Lebanese-Canadian queer femme emerging artist, writer and organizer. Through poetry, performance art, installation and zines, Hajjar’s practice grapples with diaspora, queerness, intergenerational inheritance, food culture and feminism.

MATTHEW HO L LET Tis a writer and visual artist in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador. His poetry manuscript “Optic Nerve” won the 2017 NLCU Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. Matthew was awarded The Malahat Review’s 2017 Open Season Award for Creative Nonfiction, and he was long-listed for the 2017 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize and 2016 CBC Poetry Prize. His work has been published most recently in Riddle Fence and subTerrain.

TERESA H OR OS KO currently studies Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg and has been accepted into the Joint Communications Degree Program with Red River College. She grew up on a farm an hour outside of Winnipeg and has lived in the city for the past seven years. Winnipeg quickly won her heart with its art and culture scene that rivals that of bigger cities while still maintaining a sense of community.

GRAEME HOUSSIN is a gender non-conforming writer and illustrator, currently studying Creative Communications at Red River College. He works as an editor-at-large at The Projector and frequently contributes to the Winnipeg music magazine Sound, Phrase & Fury.

CATHERINE HUNTER’S books include the poetry collection Latent Heat and the novel After Light. She teaches at the University of Winnipeg.

KARLA KORMAN is a professional designer who writes fiction and poetry in Winnipeg. Her poetry has appeared in The Dalhousie Review and CV2, and is forthcoming in Theatre By The River’s Wine and Words production at the Manitoba Museum.

BEN LADOUCEUR is the prose editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and a regular columnist for Open Book. His first collection of poems, Otter (Coach House Books), won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. His second collection, “Mad Long Emotion,” will be coming out in 2019 (Coach House Books).

He has recently published poems in Poetry, CV2 and The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, and fiction in Maisonneuve, The Rusty Toque and Prairie Fire.

ANNE LE DRESSAY began publishing poetry in the 1970s. She has published two books, Old Winter (Chaudiere Books, 2007) and Sleep Is a Country (Harbinger, 1997), as well as two chapbooks, Woman Dreams (above/ground, 1998) and This Body That I Live In (Turnstone, 1979). She is retired and teaching the writing of memoirs.

J.R.LÉVEILLÉ is the author of thirty works in French and is along time friend of Prairie Fire. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s Award of Distinction.

ROBIN K. MACDONALD’S writing has appeared in literary journals across the country and been longlisted for a CBC literary award. “Roadkill Heart” is an excerpt from her memoir in process, “Unsettled.” Robin was born and raised in Winnipeg and lived for many years in northern Manitoba. She now lives in the Gatineau hills of western Quebec.

JOANNE MCDOWALL has been spending the past few years working with newcomers to Canada, helping them to develop their English and their interviewing skills so that they can find employment here. This has been a nice distraction from retirement.

MAURICE MI ERA U is currently writing a novel about the war in Ukraine with the support of a Manitoba Arts Council major arts grant. During 2016 he visited the war in eastern Ukraine and family members in the west. Maurice is the author of Detachment: An Adoption Memoir, which won the 2016 Kobzar Literary Award and the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction. He has published three books of poems, Autobiographical Fictions, ReLit Award winner Fear Not and Ending with Music.

CHRISTINE MI SCION E’ s work has appeared in various literary journals such as This Magazine, Lemon Hound and The Puritan. In 2012, her story “Skin, Just” won first place in the Gloria Vanderbilt/Exile Editions CVC Short Fiction Contest. In 2014, her debut short-story collection, Auxiliary Skins, won the ReLit Award for short fiction. That same year her debut novel, Carafola, was shortlisted for the Hamilton Literary

Awards. Recently, a new story entitled “The Water” won 2nd Runner-up in PRISM International’s inaugural Jacob Zilber Prize for short fiction. Christine is currently at work on both a novel and a short fiction collection.

SUZANNE NUSSEY works as a freelance writer and editor in Ottawa. She has developed and facilitated writing workshops for women living in local shelters, and she teaches workshops and coaches individuals in memoir writing.

ERIN PRYCE lives with her husband and three young daughters in Magrath, Alberta. She supports children who live with disabilities to find inclusion and success in a school setting. Erin draws inspiration for her writing from her life in southern Alberta and her family.

MELA RENARD has served on the board of The Writers’ Collective of Manitoba. Her short stories may be found in two anthologies published by the Manitoba Indigenous Writers’ Collective. She lives in Winnipeg with a bossy ginger cat named Rocky.

Born in the UK, PATRICIA ROBERTSON grew up in British Columbia and received her MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. Her first collection of fiction, City of Orphans, was shortlisted for the BC Book Prizes for Fiction, and her work has been nominated for the Journey Prize, the Pushcart Prize and the National Magazine Awards. In 2015–16 she served as writer-in-residence at Winnipeg’s Millennium Library. She now writes, edits and teaches in Winnipeg.

PAUL SAVOIE haswrittenseveralbooksinbothFrenchandEnglish, and has translated the poetry of Louis Riel into English and the poetry of Dennis Lee into French. He received the Trillium Award for his books CRAC and Bleu bémol and the Prix Champlain for Dérapages, a book of short stories. He lives in Toronto.

JACQUI S MYTH works as a gardener for the City of Winnipeg.

DEBBIE STRANGE is an award-winning short-form poet and haiga artist. Her work has been translated and widely published internationally. Most recently, she received first place honours in the 2017 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku Invitational.

MARGARET SWEAT MA N’ s novels are Fox, Sam and Angie, When Alice Lay Down with Peter, The Players and Mr. Jones. She writes essays, song lyrics and libretti, poetry, plays and short fiction, and is a vocalist and harmonica player. She teaches at the University of Winnipeg.

JIM TALLOSI lives and writes in St. Boniface, Manitoba. His poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire, NeWest Review, The Antigonish Review, Border Crossings and Canadian Literature. Jim’s two collections of poetry are The Trapper and the Fur-faced Spirits (Queenston House) and Talking Water, Talking Fire (Queenston House). Staccato Chapbooks published a long poem entitled Stone Snake in 2001.

LINDA TRINH lives in Winnipeg and writes non-fiction and fiction. Through her writing, she is exploring spirituality through the lens of her Vietnamese heritage, Buddhist upbringing, love of world mythologies, and travel to sacred spaces around the globe. Her work has appeared in the literary journal Same. She is currently working on her first book, a work of narrative non-fiction. Linda may be found online at lindatrinhblog.wordpress.com and on Twitter @LindaYTrinh.

MY RON TURNER has published poetry in Canada and the US, including three books: Things That Fly, Rag Doll’s Shadow, Playing The Numbers. In the ‘70s Myron was a co-publisher of Four Humours Press and co-editor of The Far Point. He is a prize-winning printmaker and a multi-media artist, using digital and web-based forms. Myron has exhibited internationally, and his work can be found in the collections of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum and others.p