Contributors

Rasha Abdulhadi grew up between Damascus and south Georgia, cut her teeth organizing in Chicago and Atlanta. Her work appears in Mslexia, Mizna, and sinnerscreek.com. She is a contributor to Arab American Aesthetics (Routledge, 2017/18) and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (Twelfth Planet Press, 2017). She lives in Washington D.C.

Adèle Barclay’s poems and criticism have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Puritan, PRISM international, The Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection is If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood, 2016). She is the 2017 Critic-in-Residence for CWILA. She lives in Vancouver.

Juliane Okot Bitek is a poet. Her most recent publication is 100 Days (Alberta Press, 2016), but she did get a short story published in Room 20.3 (Fall 1997). Juliane lives and loves in Vancouver.

Ariane Both is an engineer living in Arizona, where she writes speculative fiction in her free time to avoid the blistering heat and the scorpions. She has a short story, “The World is Fire,” published by Overland Literary Journal. arianeboth.com.

Aimee Henny Brown’s artistic practice engages archives and printed matter to situate historical content within contemporary art. Holding a BFA with Honours and an MFA from NSCAD University, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. She is currently represented through the VAG Art Rental & Sales Program.

Leonarda Carranza lives in Brampton, Ontario by way of San Salvador, El Salvador. In her writing, she draws on experiences of migration, loss, and unbelonging. She holds a PhD from the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, where her research focused on the experience of humiliation and shaming in schools.

Rose-Anne Chabot lives in Quebec City, where she works as a French-to-English translator. A bit of a wanderer, she loves international travel, road trips, and long, rambling walks. Her poetry has appeared in Understorey Magazine, A Quiet Courage, Sassafras Literary Magazine, and a previous issue of Room.

Karla Comanda is a Vancouver-based poet and translator. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. Her work has recently been published in Grain, SAD Mag, and Cha. Originally from the Philippines, she is currently the fiction editor for Ricepaper magazine.

Rachna Contractor is the reviews editor of Plentitude magazine and co-director of Unforked Salon, a monthly dining event. She completed a BA in Art History from the University of Toronto and after a decade of working in communications, Rachna moved to the hospitality industry. Rachna lives in Parkdale, Toronto.

Marita Dachsel is the author of Glossolalia (Anvil Press, 2013), All Things Said & Done (Caitlin Press, 2007), and the play Initiation Trilogy (Electric Company Theatre, 2012). Her installation Divination was part of Belfry Theatre’s Spark Festival, 2017. She lives in Victoria.

Stacy Gardner is a poet and playwright living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She is currently in collaboration on a comedic web series and writing a play inspired by her work in social services—exploring the marginalized voice, classism, and attachment theory. Her erotic poetry can be seen in an anthology published by Black Moss Press (May 2017). stacygardner.ca

Branwyn Holroyd is from British Columbia, but she loves to wander. A recent graduate from the Red Earth MFA at Oklahoma City University, she has publications in Cirque and San Pedro River Review. She is currently an intern at the literary organization SOMOS, in Taos, New Mexico.

Sandeep Johal is a Canadian-born South Asian artist living and working in Vancouver, Canada. She recently completed a residency for the inaugural Artistin-Residence Program at the Anvil Centre. Sandeep is currently preparing for her upcoming solo show, “Rest in Power”, at the Gam Gallery in Vancouver, opening September 8th.

Sharon Kirsch is the author of What Species of Creatures (New Star Books, 2008), a work of creative non-fiction about first encounters between early settlers and unfamiliar “beasts.” Most recently, a selection of her flash prose appeared in the 2017 Nostalgia issue of subTerrain magazine. She lives in Toronto.

Katherine Koller, from Edmonton, writes for the stage, screen, and page. Her trilogy of Alberta Landworks plays includes Last Chance Leduc, The Seed Savers, and Coal Valley. Her six-part web series, Sustainable Me, features Edmonton youth changing their world. Her novel, Art Lessons, is a finalist in the Alberta Readers’ Choice Awards.

Lydia Kwa lives and works in Vancouver. She has published two books of poetry and three novels. She has a new novel, Oracle Bone, coming out in Fall 2017 with Arsenal Pulp Press.

Alissa McArthur is a member of the Growing Room Collective. She holds an MA in English literature from UBC and writes and edits out of Toronto.

Emily McKibbon is a Hamilton-born, Barrie-based curator and writer. Her first chapbook, Notes on Photographs, was released by Baseline Press in October 2016.

Amanda Merpaw lives, writes, and teaches in Toronto. She holds an MA in English from Ryerson University.

Shelley Marie Motz lives on the traditional territory of the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. Culture, place, and identity are prevalent in her work, which has been published by The Globe & Mail, The Timberline Review, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. You can find her online at shelleymariemotz.com.

Nav Nagra is a writer, reader, and knitter. Currently, she is working on a novel that will one day be finished (she hopes).

Dorothy Nielsen has been a cellist, a poet, and a professor of English; she is currently a Creative Writing facilitator at King’s University College in London, Ontario. She has published poetry and literary criticism in many Canadian and U.S. journals, as well as in anthologies and essay collections.

Rita O’Grady lives and works in Vancouver, B.C., and has a particular interest in exploring the tension between object and image. She graduated from Emily Carr University in 2011.

Kimberly Peterson’s experience as a nurse informs the themes of grief and joy that she explores. Recently, her poems have been published in Poetry Breakfast, Drunk Monkeys, 3Element Review, Black Napkin, Byword, Generation Magazine, and The Banister. She lives in a rural community outside of Ottawa.

Claire Polders is a Dutch author of four novels, with a debut in English on the way. Her short prose appeared in TriQuarterly, Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. Born in Gouda, she now resides in Paris with her American husband. Her virtual self lives at clairepolders.com.

Ramna Safeer is a university student living in Kingston, raised in Toronto, and born in Pakistan. Her work has been published in Atwood Mag, Burnt Roti Magazine, Gal-Dem Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, and Lake Effect 8 (Upstart Press, 2017).

Dr. Nilofar Shidmehr is a British Columbia Book Prize-nominated writer with four books in English and Farsi. Her writing has appeared in literary journals including The New Quarterly and Descant. Nilofar lives in Vancouver and teaches in the SFU Liberal Arts Program. She is the 2017 Writer-in-Residence at the City of Richmond.

Arielle Spence is a queer, nonbinary aspiring writer and arts administrator originally from Coldstream, B.C. (unceded Okanagan Territory). In 2017, they were the festival director of Room’s inaugural Growing Room feminist literary festival.

Born in Montréal, Quebec, Chanda Stallman is a visual artist who currently lives and works in Vancouver, B.C. Her mixed-media collages and illustrations have been showcased in several small group exhibitions in Vancouver. Stallman self-published her first artist book, I’m Trying to Illustrate a Feeling, in 2016.

Catherine J. Stewart is a Victoria-based poet and a graduate of the University of Victoria’s writing program. She is currently completing her MFA at UBC. Her poetry has been published in Grain and untethered and was shortlisted for the 2013 National Magazine Awards.

Florence Treadwell lives part of the year in Peterborough, Ontario, and the other in France, on the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux, her hometown. She has published a first poetry collection, Cleaving (Ronsdale Press, 1999), and poems in numerous literary magazines, such as Grain, Event, Prairie Fire, and Vallum.

Nadia Siu Van is a Toronto-based writer and reviews editor at Shameless magazine.

Sarah Wolfson’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, AGNI, CV2, and West Branch. Her work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Originally from Vermont, she now lives in Montréal, on unceded Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk) territory.

Annie Wong is a multidisciplinary artist, arts educator, and writer based in Toronto.