CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Louise Baker is a London-born biologist turned designer and illustrator. She moved to Vancouver in 2016. She maintains a focus for research and experimentation with a playful eclectic style, and is currently enjoying rediscovering creative techniques outside of the computer screen.

Jenny Boychuk’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2016, Prairie Fire, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, Room, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She lives in Blind Bay, B.C.

Jessica Bromley Bartram is an illustrator, graphic designer, and writer who lives in Ottawa. Ghost Water Kiss, a collection of her illustrated short stories, will be published by Popnoir Editions in spring 2019, and she has illustrated two picture books, Charles and Summer North Coming, for Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

Monica Joy Claesson is originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, but currently lives and teaches English in Cheonan, South Korea. She spends her free time backpacking, rock climbing, and otherwise enjoying the outdoors. Publications include journals such as The Tampa Review, The Cream City Review, Fields, Painted Bride Quarterly, and many more.

Kess Costales is a Toronto-based, queer Filipina author represented by Kat Enright of the Seymour Agency. She is a recent University of Toronto graduate and now works in a patisserie. You can usually find her constantly daydreaming about monsters, magic, and romance.

Sophie Crocker is a poet, fiction writer, and performance artist based in Victoria, B.C. as an uninvited settler on unceded Coast Salish territory. She graduates in the spring with a BFA from University of Victoria. Room is her first publication.

Ruth Daniell is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in journals across Canada and elsewhere, including Arc, Grain, CV2, and previously in Room magazine. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Brightest Thing, is forthcoming from Caitlin Press in early 2019. She lives with her family in Kelowna, B.C.

Alex Hall received her BA in cinema studies from the University of Toronto. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in Waccamaw Journal, Underblong Journal, Dyke Queen Zine/Hello Mr Magazine, and Grimoire. She lives and works as a dog walker in Toronto, Ontario.

Elizabeth Holliday is a writer and performer living on unceded Coast Salish territories. With a BA in gender, race, sexuality, and social justice, she is passionate about media that challenges norms and mainstream representations. You can find her work in Discorder, SAD Mag, and Looselips.

Taryn Hubbard joined the Room editorial board in November 2012. Her poetry, fiction, reviews, and interviews have appeared in journals such as Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, Canadian Woman Studies, filling Station, Rusty Toque, and others. She lives in B.C.’s Fraser Valley.

Nailah King is a member of the Room editorial collective and the co-editor of Room’s first Women of Colour issue. Her work has appeared in the Feels Zine and Word and Colour.

Lauren Kirshner’s writing has appeared in Hazlitt, The Globe and Mail, ELLE, and THIS. Her novel, Where We Have to Go (McClelland & Stewart, 2009) was a finalist for the City of Toronto Book Award. She is the founder of Sister Writes and an assistant professor of English at Ryerson University.

Cody Klippenstein’s fiction has won the Zoetrope: All-Story short story prize, The Fiddlehead short story prize, and been a finalist for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons and Open Season Awards. She holds an MFA from Cornell University, and splits her time between Upstate New York and Vancouver, B.C.

Suzanne Langlois lives in Portland, Maine, USA, where she teaches high school English. Her poems have appeared in NAILED magazine, Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, The Fourth River, Off The Coast, Rattle, and on the Button Poetry channel. She is currently an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College.

Exploring the liminal spaces between the darkness of the waking world and the mystery of the unconscious, Teresa E Lobos uses paper, paint, and ink to question concepts of the feminine body, re-appropriating and decaying traditional representations of the female form and contrasting it with the unsettling energy of the occult.

Lynne M MacLean is a Winnipeg-born Ottawa writer and health research consultant who has also lived in the Prairies and Northwest Territories. She has had short fiction and poetry published in PodCastle, Stupefying Stories, and On Spec Magazine, among others. Catch her at LynneMMacLean. com and @LynneMaclean2.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novels include Signal to Noise (Solaris, 2015), Certain Dark Things (Thomas Dunne, 2016), and The Beautiful Ones (Thomas Dunne, 2017). She won a World Fantasy Award for her work as an editor. Her most recent book is Gods of Jade and Shadow (Del Rey, 2019). She lives in Vancouver, B.C.

Isabelle Nguyen is a writer and illustrator based in Montréal (Tiohtiá:ke, Kanien’ké:ha territory). Her short comics have been published by carte blanche magazine, Tabulit Comics, the Fine Arts Reading Room, among others. She has forthcoming work in Augur Magazine. Currently, she is working on starting her own web comic.

Gaëlle Planchenault writes, works and lives on Burnaby Mountain, unceded ancestral and traditional territories of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish),

xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations. As an expatriate, she has a strong interest in exploring how people define themselves through history, stories, as well as a transitory attachment to the land.

Melanie Power is a poet from Newfoundland whose work has been featured in Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, and Southword Journal. She lives in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal on unceded Indigenous lands, where she is pursuing an M.A. in literature at Concordia University.

Natasha Ramoutar is an Indo-Guyanese writer by way of Scarborough (Ganatsekwyagon) on the east side of Toronto. She holds a master's degree in professional communication from Ryerson University. Her work has been published or exhibited by Living Hyphen, Understorey Magazine, Diaspora Dialogues, Scarborough Arts, the City of Toronto, and more.

Jessica Rose is a writer and editor whose reviews have appeared in publications across Canada. She is a senior editor at the Hamilton Review of Books and a writer at Hamilton Magazine. Jessica has ten years of experience in educational publishing and is the reviews editor at THIS.

A bilingual writer with six books in English and Farsi, Nilofar Shidmehr is author of Between Lives (Oolichan Books, 2014) and Shirin and Salt Man (Oolichan Books, 2008), nominated for a BC Book Prize. Her first short story collection in English, Divided Loyalties, is forthcoming (House of Anansi Press, 2019).

jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Anishinaabe Two-Spirit trans femme warrior whose roots hail from the Sapotaweyak and Skownan Cree Nation. jaye is a displaced indigenous person living, creating and occupying on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh

(Squamish) First Nations territory.

Cristalle Smith has been published in Paper Shell, Sky Island Journal, Twyckenham Notes, and Gordian Review. Cristalle is a MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, where she lives on the unceded territory of the Syilx Nation in Kelowna. Cristalle studies under Matt Rader.

Arielle Spence is a queer, non-binary feminist and literary arts enthusiast. They grew up as a settler on the unceded Syilx territories and have been living, loving, and playing on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations for the past eight years.

Emily Urquhart is a journalist with a doctorate in folklore. Her work has appeared in Longreads, The New Quarterly, The Rumpus, and The Walrus. She is the author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes (HarperCollins, 2015). She lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt’s fiction was recently nominated for the Journey Prize. She won the Humber Literary Review’s Emerging Writers Fiction Contest in 2018 and her work has appeared in The CVC Short Fiction Anthology, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Room, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Montréal.

Isabella Wang is a young, emerging Chinese-Canadian writer from Vancouver, B.C. She is studying English at SFU and interning at Room magazine. Her debut poetry chapbook, Late, is forthcoming with Baseline Press (2019).

Yilin Wang is a Vancouver-based writer, editor, and Chinese-to-English translator. Her writing has been published in Clarkesworld, Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, LooseLeaf Journal, The Tyee, Matador Network, and other publications, while her debut short story translation is forthcoming in Pathlight: New Chinese Writing. She is a member of Room’s editorial collective.

Hannah V Warren teaches poetics and literature courses. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and she serves as Editor-in-Chief for LandLocked. Her works have recently appeared or will soon appear in Whiskey Island and Briar Cliff Review. She writes and tends her plants in Lawrence, Kansas.

Born in Taiwan and currently living in Vancouver, Christine Wei’s works are inspired by people’s everyday journeys through life. Christine enjoys creating illustrations that are simultaneously whimsical, searching, and sentimental. She illustrates with the hope to provide people an imaginative segue into challenging but necessary discourses.

Lan Yao was born in Tianjin, China. Lan lived in Beijing, China with her parents and brother until the age of nine. In 1987, the whole family emigrated to Edmonton, Alberta, where her father was enrolled at the University of Alberta. In 1996, Lan moved to Vancouver, B.C., to continue her studies in painting and drawing. She worked in the 3D animation industry from 2003 to 2010. In 2010, Lan moved to Squamish, B.C., where she now lives and paints.