Kyeren Regehr’s collection Cult Life, was a finalist for the 2021 ReLit Awards and The Victoria Butler Book Prize; Disassembling A Dancer won the inaugural Raven Chapbooks contest. Since 2008, her poetry has been published in dozens of literary periodicals and anthologies in Canada, Australia, and the USA, including The Literary Review of Canada, Canadian Literature, Best New Poets, Best Canadian Poetry in English, Arc Poetry Magazine, Hecate, and many others. Her work has been thrice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Awards and has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts. Although born in Australia, she was raised as a writer in Canada—she holds a BFA and MFA in Writing, taught in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria, and served as an editor on the poetry board of The Malahat Review. She has mentored poets through the Writer’s Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets, and works as a freelance literary editor and writing mentor. Kyeren’s background is in professional dance and theatre, and she once found herself in Victoria’s Poetry Slam finals by accident. She is presently completing Indigenous Canada, an online course through the University of Alberta, and she lives and writes with gratitude on the unceded lands of the W̱SÁNEĆ people.

More about Kyeren here: www.kyerenregehr.ca

Anne Hopkinson writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from her home in Victoria. She is a retired teacher, nature lover, and water rat. Her work appears in anthologies: Walk Myself Home by Caitlin Press, V6A, Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press), and Poet to Poet by Guernica Press. Most recently Refugium, by Caitlin Press. She won the Victoria Writer’s Society Creative Non-/fiction Contest in 2018, and The Canadian Stories Poetry Prize for 2019. Her work was short-listed for the BC Federation of Writers Poetry Prize in 2019, and in the FBCW BC and Yukon short fiction prize in 2020.

Bill Trott served as Chief Privacy Officer at the University of Victoria from 2009 until his retirement in 2019. Previously he worked for the Ministry of Health, and for the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia. He was with the Offices of the Ombudsman in British Columbia and Ontario, Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office, Ontario, and the Community Legal Assistance Society in Vancouver, BC. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. He has served on several boards of community organizations including the national Canadian Mental Health Association.

Patricia (Pat) Wilson is a retired chartered accountant who is an active and committed volunteer in her community. In 1997, after many working years in public practice, industry and project management, she settled in Greater Victoria. Her passions are family, home, gardening (including urban farming), friends, neighbours, neighbourhood, and the heritage aspects of her community. She is a past chair of the Oak Bay Heritage Commission and is still an active member. She is also involved in local issues and takes an active role in municipal Council elections, densification issues, as well as the protection of green spaces and the Garry oaks.

Barbara Pelman is a retired high school English teacher, and poet. She conducts poetry workshops in her home—when possible, and is a frequent participant and assistant at Planet Earth Poetry’s Friday night venue. She has three published books of poetry: One Stone (Ekstasis Editions 2005), Borrowed Rooms (Ronsdale Press, 2008), and Narrow Bridge (Ronsdale Press 2017), and four chapbooks. In 2018 her glosa, “Nevertheless” won the Malahat Open Season Poetry Contest. Previously another glosa “After Winter” won the Literary Writes contest in 2005. Her poems can be found in anthologies as well as in various literary journals.

Wendy Donawa spent three decades of her adult life in Barbados, where she was educated, and worked as a college instructor and museum curator.  Since returning to her Victoria birthplace, she has enjoyed Planet Earth Poetry’s lively community, and her poems have appeared in poetry magazines, chapbooks, and anthologies. She has given readings at PEP, at libraries, bookstores, literary festivals, parks, and a pub! Her first poetry collection, Thin Air of the Knowable (Brick Books, 2017), was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award. Our Bodies’ Unanswered Questions (Frontenac House), is her second book.

Marlene Grand Maître’s chapbook Cancer’s Rogue Season was published by Frog Hollow Press in April 2020. Her poetry has also appeared in many literary journals, most recently in Prairie Fire, CV2 and Event. Poems have also been published in eight anthologies, including I Found it at the Movies (Guernica, 2014), Refugium: Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin Press, 2017), Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press, 2020), and Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis Editions, 2020). She has won poetry prizes, and had a poem longlisted for Best Canadian Poetry In English (Tightrope Books, 2011). Before retirement, her most rewarding work was done over many years in programs for women abused by intimate partners.