Locations of Grief : An Emotional Geography

Catherine Owen is the author of fifteen collections of poetry and prose. Her latest book of poetry, Dear Ghost, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award and her most recent picture book for children was shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award. She sings in the band Doom Cowboy and has four cats. Born and raised in Vancouver, BC, she now lives in a heritage home called Delilah in Edmonton, AB, where she works as an editor and, when back on the coast, in film props.

Alice Major has published eleven books of poetry and a prize-winning collection of essays, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science. Recent awards include the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta. She served as Edmonton’s first poet laureate, a city where she continues to live.

Katherine Bitney is the author of four books of poetry, a collection of essays on nature and the text for a choral piece. A fifth collection of poems is under construction. She has worked as editor, mentor, writing instructor and arts juror for over three decades. She lives, gardens and writes in Winnipeg.

Alice Burdick is the author of four full-length poetry collections, Simple Master, Flutter, Holler and Book of Short Sentences. Deportment, a book of selected poems, came out in 2018 from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She has been a judge for various awards, including the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize. She co-owns an independent bookstore in Lunenburg called Lexicon Books and now lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.

Jenna Butler is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012) and Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010); an award-winning collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge the of Grizzly Trail (Wolsak and Wynn, 2015); and a poetic travelogue, Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard (University of Alberta Press, 2018).

Butler's research into endangered environments has taken her from America's Deep South to Ireland's Ring of Kerry, and from volcanic Tenerife to the Arctic Circle onboard an ice-class masted sailing vessel, exploring the ways in which we impact the landscapes we call home. A professor of creative writing and environmental writing at Red Deer College, she lives with seven resident moose and a den of coyotes on an off-grid organic farm in Alberta's North Country.

Marilyn Dumont is of Cree/Métis ancestry. Poet, writer and professor, she teaches with the Faculty of Native Studies and the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Her four collections of poetry have all won either provincial or national poetry awards: A Really Good Brown Girl (1996), green girl dreams Mountains (2001), that tongued belonging (2007) and The Pemmican Eaters (2015). She was awarded the 2018 Lifetime Membership from the League of Canadian Poets for her contributions to poetry in Canada, and in 2019 was awarded the Alberta Lieutenant Governor’s Distinguished Artist Award. She lives in Edmonton, AB.

Ben Gallagher is a poet, essayist and new father, currently in the middle of a PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, researching non-linear pedagogy and poetic practices in community poetry workshops. Recent poems can be found in untethered, Sewer Lid, The Puritan, (parenthetical) and Arc. He lives in Lunenburg, NS.

Catherine Graham is a poet, novelist and creative writing instructor. She is the author of six acclaimed poetry collections, including The Celery Forest, a CBC Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Poetry Award and her debut novel, Quarry, was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and Fred Kerner Book Award and won the Miramichi Reader’s “The Very Best!” Book Award and an Independent Publisher Book Awards’ gold medal for Fiction. She holds an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University (UK). Her poems have been translated into Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bangla, Chinese and Spanish and have appeared in The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Glasgow Review of Books, Exile Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Gutter Magazine and have been broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster, anthologized in The White Page / An Bhileag Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets and The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol IV & V. A finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, she has won the Arc Award of Awesomeness and her poems have been nominated for the 2020 National Magazine Award by Exile Magazine. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW, she leads their monthly book club and is also an interviewer for By the Lake Book Club.

Catherine Greenwood has lived and worked in British Columbia, New Brunswick, China and southeast England. Previous job titles include publications analyst, foreign expert, financial aid adjudicator and pet sitter. She has published two collections of poetry, The Pearl King and Other Poems and The Lost Letters. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, and has been recognized with several prizes, including a National Magazine Gold Award. She now lives in South Yorkshire where, as a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield, she is pursuing an interest in Scottish Gothic poetry.

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the queer, non-binary, disabled author of nine books of creative non-fiction, memoir, fiction and poetry, including the 2016 novel Weekend, and two prior collections of short fiction. Their memoir was one of the UK Guardian’s Best Books of the Year and a Sunday Times bestseller. They are the two-time winner of Canada’s CBC Literary Award for fiction (2003/2014). They have had a Notable in BASS and three in BAE (2016/2018/2019) and have appeared in The Journey Prize, Best Canadian Short Stories and Best Canadian Poetry. They live near Vancouver, BC.

Richard Harrison is the author of seven books of poetry, including the Governor General’s Award–winning On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Mount Royal University in Calgary, where he lives with his wife, Lisa.

David Haskins wanted to write ever since Enid Blyton sent him a handwritten postcard when he was seven. He also wanted to become a veterinary surgeon. He settled for mentorships under CanLit’s A-listers Joe Rosenblatt, Austin Clarke, Matt Cohen, John Herbert, P.K. Page and others, and a career teaching English to high schoolers. His poetry books, Reclamation (Borealis, 1980) and Blood Rises (Guernica, 2020), and his literary memoir This House Is Condemned (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013) top a long list of published works that have won first place awards from the CBC, the Ontario Poetry Society, the Canadian Authors Association, gritLIT and Arts Hamilton. He continues to live in the family home in Grimsby, Ontario.

Steven Heighton’s most recent books are a novel, The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep, and a poetry collection, The Waking Comes Late, which received the 2016 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His short fiction and poetry have received four gold National Magazine Awards and have appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry Magazine (Chicago), Tin House, Best American Poetry, The Literary Review, Agni, Zoetrope, Geist and five editions of Best Canadian Stories. In 2020, he will publish two books, Reaching Mithymna – a non-fiction account of the Middle Eastern refugee influx on Lesvos, Greece – and a children’s book drawing on the same events. Heighton is also a translator, an occasional teacher and a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. He has been based in Kingston, Ontario, for thirty years.

Theresa Kishkan lives on the Sechelt Peninsula with her husband, John Pass, in a house she and John built and where they raised their children. She has published fourteen books, most recently Euclid’s Orchard, a collection of essays about family history, botany, mathematics and love (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2017). Her novella, The Weight of the Heart, is due out from Palimpsest Press in spring 2020.

Christine Lowther is the author of several books (memoir and poetry) and co-editor of two anthologies. She won the inaugural Rainy Coast Arts Award for Significant Accomplishment from the Pacific Rim Arts Society. Her work appears in collections like Rising Tides, Sweet Water,Force Field and Canadian Ginger. Chris now lives in Tla-o-qui-aht unceded territory.

Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, critic and teacher from St. Lucia, published and anthologized internationally with translations of her work into Spanish, Italian and forthcoming in French and German. Her poetry debut Voodoo Hypothesis (Buckrider Books, 2017) was named a CBC Best Book and garnered multiple award nominations. The Dyzgraphxst (M&S, 2020) is her sophomore book of poetry. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and lives in Ontario.

James Picard has exhibited extensively in close to two hundred art exhibitions throughout North America and Europe, and next to world-renowned art legends such as Picasso, Matisse, Miró, and Warhol. He has also taught at several universities and has released three books on his art. He was the first artist to exhibit his paintings at the historical Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco, part of his The Dark & The Wounded painting series and world art tour, which he filmed and turned into a documentary film that won awards across the North American film festival circuit in 2017/18, culminating in a screening in May 2018 at the 71st Cannes International Film Festival in France. He currently resides in California.

Nikki Reimer writes poetry, non-fiction and micro-reviews, and dabbles in art. Published books are My Heart is a Rose Manhattan (Talon Books, 2019), DOWNVERSE (Talon Books, 2014) and [sic] (Frontenac House, 2010). She continues to live in Calgary, AB, on the traditional territories of the people of Treaty 7.

Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation on Georgian Bay. His first short story collection, Midnight Sweatlodge, was inspired by his experiences growing up in an Anishinaabe community, and won an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2012. His debut novel, Legacy, followed in 2014. A French translation of Legacy was published in 2017. His latest novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was released in 2018 and quickly became a bestseller. He presently lives in Sudbury, Ontario, with his wife and son.

Lisa Richter is the author of a book of poetry, Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017). Her work has previously appeared in The New Quarterly, CV2, The Puritan, The Malahat Review, Literary Review of Canada and the anthology Jack Layton: Art in Action (Quattro Books, 2013). Her next collection of poems, Nautilus and Bone, is forthcoming with Frontenac House in fall 2020. She lives in Toronto.

Lynn Tait is a Toronto-born poet/photographer. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals including Vallum, FreeFall, and in over one hundred anthologies. She’s also published a chapbook and co-authored a book with four other poets. She currently resides in Sarnia, Ontario.

Sharon Thesen has been living, working, teaching and writing in British Columbia, from Kamloops to Prince George to Vancouver (for a long while), and more recently in the Okanagan Valley. A poet, editor and critic, she is Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

Onjana Yawnghwe is the author of two books of poetry, Fragments, Desire (Oolichan, 2017) and The Small Way (Caitlin, 2018). She recently illustrated the novel Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante and has illustrations forthcoming in The Broken Boat by Daniela Elza. She is currently working on a graphic novel about her family and Myanmar (Burma). She still lives in Coquitlam, BC.

Daniel Zomparelli is the author of Davie Street Translations (Talonbooks), and Rom Com (Talonbooks) co-written with Dina Del Bucchia. His first collection of short stories, Everything Is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person (Arsenal Pulp Press), was nominated for the 2018 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. He is an executive producer and host of the podcast I’m Afraid That, produced with Little Everywhere. He lives in Los Angeles.