CONTRIBUTORS

Jennifer Amos is a writer based in Kingston, Ontario. Her work has appeared in The Feathertale Review, The New Quarterly, and has been longlisted for the CBC short story prize and shortlisted for Room’s annual fiction contest. North Vancouver author and artist Jenn Ashton is no stranger to creativity. Coming from an artistic family, she brings creative flair to her projects; from the non-profit boardroom and the challenges of being a young parent, to producing music, she is known for her originality, resourcefulness, and vision. Jamelie Bachaalani is an emerging queer writer from Alberta. Her work deals with identity, trauma, adolescence, life in the prairies, and the occasional talking animal. Jamelie is a recent graduate of MacEwan University. Colleen Baran is a Canadian artist, writer, and designer living on the unceded traditional lands of the Coast Salish Peoples (Surrey, British Columbia). Baran’s art has exhibited in galleries and museums in eleven countries and been published in a few more. Her written work has been published in magazines in Canada and China. Adèle Barclay’s debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood, 2016), won the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She is an editor for Rahila’s Ghost Press and the 2017 Critic-in-Residence for Canadian Women in Literary Arts. She teaches at UBC. Alexandra Chang’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Glimmer Train and 3:AM Magazine. She lives in Ithaca, N.Y., and is a student in the Syracuse University MFA program. Born in Manila and raised in Toronto, a lifetime of imagining new worlds led Kristina Corre to architecture school in Ottawa. Beyond architecture, her education instilled the importance of narrative in image making, of meticulousness in craft, and making as a means to discovery. These lessons currently drive her explorations into hand-cut, found-object collage. Maggie de Vries is the author of eight books for children, two books for teens, and an adult memoir. Her most recent novel is Rabbit Ears (HarperCollins, 2014). Maggie teaches in the Creative Writing Program at UBC, and has recently moved to Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. Shirley Harshenin writes poetry and prose from her home in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. She believes in angels, caffeine, and the human spirit’s extraordinary resilience. Her work has been published in Canadian Writer’s Journal and in this issue of Room. Jia Hwang is a student completing her major in political science at the University of British Columbia. She is currently working on her poetry manuscript, Flies on Vacation. She lives in Coquitlam, British Columbia.

Sharon Jinkerson-Brass is an award-winning multi-media artist from Key First Nation in Saskatchewan. Currently, Sharon is working on an array of cultural and creative projects in DTES. Elizabeth Johnston’s poetry and prose have been published in The Atlantic, Feminist Formations, New Verse News, and The Boiler. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she teaches writing and gender studies in Western N.Y. strawmatwriters.weebly.com Tamara Jong is a Montreal-born, mixed-race writer living in Guelph, Ontario. Her work has appeared in Ricepaper and The New Quarterly. She is currently enrolled in The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University. Manal Kamran is a fourth-year international student at UBC in Vancouver, hailing from Karachi, Pakistan. She likes reading, rowing, oversleeping, and overeating. Friends on Facebook wish she’d stop going to so many concerts. Her friends hate her sarcasm, as do her parents. Her brother thinks she’s okay. Lily Leung is Fenn Archdekin-Leung’s grandmother. They are both artists. These days, Lily’s creative work is expressed through watercolour and Ikebana. Fenn prefers illustration. They live in Toronto and wonder why their daughter/mother lacks their artistic talents. Carrianne Leung is a writer and educator. Her debut novel, The Wondrous Woo published by Inanna Publications, was nominated for the Toronto Book Awards in 2014. Her new book, That Time I Loved You will be released in March 2018 by HarperCollins Canada. She lives in Toronto. Mary MacDonald is a poet and writer and holds a PhD from UBC. Mary thrives on collaboration and has written for ballet, opera, and public art. She is a member of the Whistler, British Columbia writing group, The Vicious Circle. Alissa McArthur is a member of the Room editorial board. She writes and edits out of Toronto and holds an MA in English Literature from UBC. Cosi Nayovitz is a writer, massage therapist, and trauma-sensitive yoga instructor based in North Carolina. She has a degree in literature and serves as Art Editor at Hematopoiesis Press. Margaret Nowaczyk’s writing has appeared in Geist, Examined Life Journal, Numero Cinq, Intima, Broken Pencil, and Prairie Fire. She co-edited Polish(ed), a Canadian-Polish diaspora short story anthology (Guernica Editions, 2017). She is a professor of pediatrics and genetics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Deanna Partridge-David is an emerging writer of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. She lives in the suburbs of Vancouver with her husband and two children. When she’s not writing or playing with her family, she can be found animating felted mice being adorable for children’s television. You can find her on Twitter occasionally at @deannapeedee.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled femme writer of Burger/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. The Lambda Award-winning author of Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home (Arsenal Pulp, 2015); Bodymap (Mawenzi House, 2015); Love Cake (Mawenzi House, 2011); and Consensual Genocide (Mawenzi House, 2006) and co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home (AK Press, 2016), she is a lead artist with the disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid. She lives between Duwamish territories and T'karonto. Rebekah Rempel’s poems have appeared in the anthologies Refugium: Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin Press, 2017); Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2013); and Unfurled: Collected Poetry from Northern BC Women (Caitlin Press, 2010); as well as a number of journals, including Contemporary Verse 2, Prairie Fire, and Room. She lives in Pouce Coupe, British Columbia. Nadia Siu Van is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She is currently the reviews editor at Shameless magazine. Arielle Spence is a queer, nonbinary aspiring writer and arts administrator originally from Coldstream, British Columbia. (unceded Okanagan Territory). In 2017, they were the festival director of Room’s inaugural Growing Room feminist literary festival. Rachel Thompson’s book of poetry, Galaxy (Anvil Press, 2011), won the SFU First Book Competition. She’s a current editorial collective member and former managing editor at Room. Rachel helps writers polish and publish their writing at WeWriteWeLight.com. She lives in Montreal. Jean Van Loon, an Ottawa-based writer, holds an MFA from UBC. Her short prose, poetry and reviews have appeared in number of Canadian literary magazines. Her first book of poems, Building on River, will be published by Cormorant Press in April 2018. Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt is a Montreal-based writer and translator whose work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Matrix, Room, carte blanche, and elsewhere. Her story “Resurfacing” was shortlisted for the 2017 Carter V. Cooper short fiction prize. Visit her at carlyrosalie.com and follow her @carlyrosalie.