Born and raised in the UK, Cathy Stonehouse has made her home for the past 30 years in East Vancouver, on the unceded, traditional Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations. She is the author of a novel (The Causes, Pedlar Press 2019), two collections of poetry (Grace Shiver, Inanna 2011, and The Words I Know, Press Gang 1994), and one collection of short fiction (Something about the Animal, Biblioasis 2011). With Fiona Tinwei Lam and Shannon Cowan, she co-edited the creative nonfiction anthology Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood (McGill-Queens University Press, 2008) and reviews fiction and nonfiction for a variety of literary publications; she also edited the literary magazine EVENT between 2000 & 2004. She has worked as an editor, typesetter, tutor, peer counselor, adult literacy and ESL instructor, and political organizer, and holds a BA (Hons) in English from Oxford University, an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and a Certificate in Expressive Arts Therapy from Langara College. Currently, she is a regularized faculty member of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s creative writing and interdisciplinary expressive arts programs, and freelances as an editor/manuscript consultant and workshop facilitator. She loves to draw and is rather fond of badgers.

Ariel Gordon is a Treaty 1 territory/Winnipeg-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. Her most recent books are Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019) and TreeTalk (At Bay Press, 2020). Ariel is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project in collaboration with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival and the Winnipeg Free Press.

A literary writer and freelance journalist with a BSc in Biology from the University of Winnipeg and a Bachelor of Journalism from Halifax’s University of King’s College, Ariel also works in publishing as a publicist and event planner.

Nicholas Bradley is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. He is the editor of We Go Far Back in Time: The Letters of Earle Birney and Al Purdy, 1947–1987 (2014) and An Echo in the Mountains: Al Purdy after a Century (2020), and the author of Rain Shadow (2018). He is also an associate editor of the journal Canadian Literature.

About Before Combustion: Arriving at a point in mid-life where stability throws up more questions than answers, the agreeable routines of work, chores and parenthood can both define and disquiet us. As the steady stream of anxieties and distractions—of screens, traffic, information overload, existential dread—sets the day-to-day human world adrift, what meaningful relationship remains possible with the natural world? In these poems, Nicholas Bradley writes of the challenges of living with attentiveness and curiosity in a time of atmospheric rivers and forest fires, of heat domes and landslides, and of the struggle to reconnect our domestic worlds to greater cycles of place and time.

DC Reid has published seventeen books, including nine collections of poetry, a novel, two works of literary nonfiction, and five books on fly fishing. A Man and His River: a 25-year love affair with a wild island waterway, recently won the Gold Medal for Books from the Professional Outdoor Writers Association. Poems Selected and New has just been released with Ekstasis Editions and draws from work in his previous eight books.

Ali Blythe is author of critically acclaimed poetry collections that explore trans-poetics.

He is winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry, twice finalist for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award and recipient of an honour of distinction from the Writers Trust of Canada for emerging LGBTQ writers.

Blythe’s poems and essays are published in national and international literary journals and anthologies, including The Broadview Introduction to Literature, Best Canadian Essays and Best Canadian Poetry.

Blythe has held roles as a guest editor for special editions of literary magazines including The League of Canadian Poets, Arc Magazine and Malahat Review, and as editor-in-chief for the Claremont Review, an international literary magazine for youth.

Sneha Madhavan-Reese was born in Detroit and now lives with her family in Ottawa. Her writing has appeared in publications around the world, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. She is the 2015 winner of Arc Poetry Magazine‘s Diana Brebner Prize, was shortlisted for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and received an honourable mention at the 2018 National Magazine Awards. She is the author of one previous poetry collection, Observing the Moon.

Cecily Nicholson is the author of four books and a past recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She was the Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence at Simon Fraser University and the Write- in-Residence at the University of Windsor. She teaches at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and collaborates with community impacted by carcerality and food insecurity.

Ronna Bloom is a poet, registered psychotherapist, (CRPO inactive) and author of six books of poetry. Her work has been broadcast on the CBC, recorded by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, translated into Bangla and Chinese, and shortlisted for several Canadian literary awards.

Ronna runs workshops, coaches writers, and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, presence and health care. In Rx for Poetry, Ronna writes and prescribes poems on the spot. She brings twenty years of psychotherapy practice to her work as a poet and facilitator.

Ronna’s new book, A Possible Trust: The Poetry of Ronna Bloom, Selected with an Introduction by Phil Hall was published in fall 2023 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Délani Valin is neurodivergent and Métis with Nehiyaw, Saulteaux, French-Canadian and Czech ancestry. She studies for her master’s in professional communications at Royal Roads University, and has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Vancouver Island University. Her poetry has been awarded The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize and subTerrain’s Lush Triumphant Award. Her work has appeared in PRISM International, Adbusters, Room, and in the anthologies Those Who Make Us and Bawaajigan. She is on the editorial board of Room and The Malahat Review, and lives on traditional and unceded Snuneymuxw territory (Nanaimo, BC).

Michelle Brown’s second book of poetry, Swans, begins as a night out between three best friends at an eponymous watering hole before becoming a phantasmagorical coming-of-age fable by closing time. In between, memory shifts and poems shuffle like songs on a jukebox, detailing fraught female friendship, sexual awakening, alcohol abuse and abandon in the dying days of a decade of decadence. Swans is a whip-smart collection from one of Canada’s catchiest lyric poets.
Michelle Brown's first full-length collection of poetry, Safe Words, was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit award. A finalist for The Malahat Review''s Open Season award, CV2's Young Buck prize and the CBC poetry prize, her work has also appeared in The Walrus, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain, PRISM International and The Puritan. After nearly a decade in Toronto, Michelle has recently returned to the West Coast, where she hangs out with her daughter, dog & husband.

Born in the UK and raised in Canada, Kazim Ali is a Queer, Muslim writer who is currently professor and chair of the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of 25 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translations, as well as the editor of five collected volumes. In 2004, he co-founded the small press Nightboat Books and served as its first publisher, and he continues to edit books with the press. Ali is also a certified yoga instructor, teaching yoga and training yoga teachers in Ramallah, Palestine for many years.

Garth Martens is author of Prologue for the Age of Consequence (Anansi) and Remediation (JackPine). He is winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award and finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry. He is producer and poet for Palabra Flamenco, an ensemble that joins poetry with flamenco music and dance. He also produces and performs in Dark Sounds, a literary flamenco series on death, grief, and the climate crisis, featuring poet Jan Zwicky. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Celebrate the beginning of National Poetry Month with readers from the Malahat Review!

D.S. Stymeist’s collection of poetry, Cluster Flux, appears this fall with Frontenac Press. His debut collection, The Bone Weir, was a finalist for the Canadian Author’s Association Poetry Award. Alongside fending off Crohn’s disease, he currently teaches creative writing at Carleton University. As former president of VERSe Ottawa, he helped organize VERSeFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival.

Jess Housty ('Cúagilákv) is a parent, writer and grassroots activist with Heiltsuk (Indigenous) and mixed settler ancestry. They serve their community as an herbalist and land-based educator alongside broader work in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. They are inspired and guided by relationships with the homelands, their extended family and their non-human kin, and they are committed to raising their children in a similar framework of kinship and land love. They reside and thrive in their unceded ancestral territory in the community of Bella Bella, BC.

Simone Littledale Escobar is a poet, multidisciplinary artist, and educator living on unceded
Lək̓wəŋən territory. Her work explores ecological grief, ties to place, the natural world, and
personal history; and draws strongly from both her Colombian/Canadian heritage and her
upbringing on the Pacific coast. Simone’s work has been published in The Malahat Review,
Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly, and translated into Spanish.

Born to an Armenian father and an Anglo-Indian mother, Keith Garebian holds a doctorate in Canadian and Commonwealth Literature from Queen’s University. The author of two chapbooks and well over two dozen books, he is a widely-published writer. His reviews and articles have appeared in over a hundred newspapers, journals, magazines, and anthologies. In 2000, he became the first critic-at-large to be appointed by a public library, when he was contracted to post theatre and book reviews for three years on the website for the Mississauga Public Library. His poetry has been published in Impulse, Echo, Inscape, The Antigonish Review, Literary Review of Canada, Exile, Quarry, Grain, The Malahat Review, and various anthologies. The winner of the prestigious William Saroyan Medal in Armenia, and the 2000, 2008, 2013, and 2019 Mississauga Arts Award for Writing, he won First Prize in the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Contest in 2009, writing grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council, and top prizes for poetry from a variety of journals and arts councils. Some of his work has been translated into French, Armenian, German, Chinese, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Hindi. A full member of the League of Canadian Poets, he is available for public readings and symposia. He has contributed book reviews to the prestigious World Literature Today website in the U.S. and The Literary Review of Canada, as well as poetry reviews to Arc Poetry Magazine and the Humber Literary Review.

Pamela Porter is the author of fourteen published books: eleven volumes of poetry and four books for children and young adults, including two novels in free verse. Her work has garnered numerous awards, including the Governor General's Award, and first prizes from the Canadian Author's Association, the Malahat Review, the Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize, Freefall Magazine, PRISM International, Vallum magazine, and others.

Catherine Owen was born and raised in Vancouver and now lives in a 1905 home in Edmonton. She is the author of sixteen collections of poetry and prose, including The Wrecks of Eden (Wolsak & Wynn 2002), Frenzy (Anvil Press 2009), Designated Mourner (ECW 2014) and her new book, Moving to Delilah (Freehand Books 2024). Her work has won awards, been translated, toured across Canada 12 times and served as dance, music and theatre-based collaborations. She also runs the performance series 94th Street Trobairitz, the blog Marrow Reviews and the podcast Ms Lyric's Poetry Outlaws.

Donna Kane is the recipient of the Aurora Award of Distinction: Arts and Culture, and the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship. Her poems, short fiction, reviews and essays have been published widely. She is the author of the non-fiction book Summer of the Horse (2018), and of three books of poetry—most recently Orrery, a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award. She divides her time between Rolla, BC, and Halifax, NS.

Matt Rader is an award-winning author of six volumes of poetry, a collection of stories and a book of nonfiction. His previous book of poems, Ghosthawk (2021), was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan and lives in Kelowna, BC.

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released with Radiant Press in April 2023. Hollay's short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, is due out with Gordon Hill Press in 2024.

Rhea Tregebov is the author of seven acclaimed books of poetry and two novels, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell and Rue des Rosiers. Her work has received the J. I. Segal Award, the Nancy Richler Memorial Prize for Fiction, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and the Prairie Schooner Readers’ Choice Award. Retired from teaching at UBC, she now holds the position of Associate Professor Emerita and is the former Chair of The Writers Union of Canada. She lives in Vancouver.

Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian writer living in Edmonton. Standing six feet tall, weighing 190 pounds, he is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, he is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne Métis and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family are settlers in Treaty 4 and 6 territories in Saskatchewan. Kerr grew up in Saskatoon, Edmonton, and other prairie towns and cities. He is the author of the poetry collections An Explosion of Feathers, Old Gods and the novel Avenue of Champions, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award, longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize, and won the 2022 ReLIT Award. In 2022, he was named one of CBC’s Writers to Watch. His writing has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories, and Best Canadian Poetry. He has won The Fiddlehead Ralph Gustafson Poetry prize, The Malahat Review's Long Poem prize, and his work has been published widely in literary magazines across Canada.

Shō Yamagushiku's work is grounded in a diasporic okinawan consciousness. He writes from the homelands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples (Victoria, BC). His first poetry collection, entitled shima, reflects ancestors, violence, and tradition.

KEVIN:

Kevin Spenst, a Pushcart Poetry nominee, is the author of Ignite, Jabbering with Bing Bong, Hearts Amok: a Memoir in Verse and the forthcoming A Bouquet Brought Back from Space, and over a dozen chapbooks including Surrey Sonnets (JackPine Press), Upend (Frog Hollow Press) and a holm with the Alfred Gustav Press. In 2019, he was writer-in-residence at the Joy Kogawa House. His work has won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry, been nominated for both the Alfred G. Bailey Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and has appeared in dozens of publications including Event, the Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, CV2, the Rusty Toque, Lemon Hound, Poetry is Dead, and the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry 2019, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds. He co-organizes the Dead Poets Reading Series, writes a chapbook column in subTerrain magazine, is an occasional co-host with RC Weslowski on Wax Poetic on Co-op Radio, teaches Creative Writing at Vancouver Community College and was the 2022 Poetry Mentor at SFU’s Writers Studio. He lives in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory.

MARC:

Marc Perez is the author of the poetry chapbook, Borderlands (Anstruther Press, 2020). His work has appeared in decomp journal, CV2, PRISM international, Vallum, TAYO, Ricepaper, and is forthcoming in EVENT.