Adrienne Barrett is a writer and bricklayer. A graduate of Trent University and the University of British Columbia, she has seen her poetry published in Arc, Prairie Fire, and The Fiddlehead. Her work has also appeared on the longlist for the 2011 Montreal Prize. Born in Hamilton, she kicked around Peterborough, Vancouver, and Toronto before settling in Woodstock, Ontario. Her poetry collection, The House is Still Standing appeared with Goose Lane Editions in 2013.
Bill Kennedy and his colleague operate a website The Apostrophe Engine which is the source of poems in apostrophe, a book published by ECW Press in 2006. the home page of the Apostrophe Engine site presents the full text of a poem called “apostrophe”, written by Bill in 1993. In the digital version of the poem, each line is a hyperlink which generates an entire new poem with the help of a team of handy robots and the entirety of the internet.
Dani Couture is the author of three collections of poetry, GOOD MEAT (Pedlar Press, 2006) and SWEET (Pedlar Press, 2010), and YAW (Mansfield Press, 2014), and the novel ALGOMA (Invisible Publishing). SWEET was named one of Maisy’s Best Books of 2010 by Maisonneuve Magazine and nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry; SWEET won the ReLit Award for poetry. In 2011, Dani also received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications including The Globe and Mail, Grain, The Walrus, Lemon Hound, Hazlitt, and two Best Canadian Poetry in English anthologies. She is the literary editor at This Magazine.
Jim Nason is the author of two books of poetry, If Lips Were as Red and The Fist of Remembering, the latter an emotionally rich and honest account of the death of his partner from cancer. Educated in Montreal (McGill), and Toronto (Ryerson and York), Jim Nason currently lives and works as a social worker in Toronto. His work, praised by writers such as John Ashbery in the United States and Laura Lush here, has appeared in many literary journals across North America. His latest work is Music Garden from Frontenac Press.
Kathy Page is the author of seven novels, including Alphabet (a Governor General's Award finalist in 2005), The Story of My Face (longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002), and The Find (shortlisted for the ReLit Award in 2011), as well as many short stories, previously collected in As In Music. She recently co-edited In the Flesh (2012), a collection of personal essays about the human body, and has written for television and radio. Born in the UK, Kathy has lived on Salt Spring Island since 2001. Alphabet will be reissued by Biblioasis in Fall 2014.
Joel-Asa Miller was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Washington, DC. He drove a taxi, operated punch presses, welded iron castings and spent 10 years as an assembler in a General Motors plant outside of Milwaukee where he was also an active member of United Autoworkers of America. Joel left Milwaukee to earn the MFA in Film and Television at UCLA. Since moving to Montreal nearly 15 years ago, Joel numerous TV commercials, documentary and fiction film projects. He currently lives in Montreal where he writes short fiction and poetry based on the many interesting characters he’s met along the way.
Stephen Near is a playwright, producer, performer and educator living in Hamilton. His plays have been performed across Canada in a variety of festivals including Toronto Fringe, Hamilton Fringe, New Ideas and Summerworks. Stephen is a member of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada and the Theatre Aquarius Playwrights Unit and co-founded three theatre companies including the new Hamilton-based Same Boat Theatre. Stephen's critically-acclaimed, full-length horror drama Monstrous Invisible, about the life of author H.P. Lovecraft, was developed and co-produced by Theatre Aquarius as part of their New Play Development and TA2 Studio Series. Stephen teaches playwriting at Mohawk College in Hamilton and is the Operations Officer with the Hamilton Arts Council.
