Martine Audet
Born in Montreal, Martine Audet is the author of over a dozen poetry books published since 1996, as well as two children’s books. She has taken part in a variety of literary and artistic events, and her poems are published regularly in Quebec and elsewhere. Among her distinctions, Audet has received the Estuaire Magazine Prize and the Alain-Grandbois Prize, and has been shortlisted several times for the Governor General’s Award and the Grand Prize in Poetry at the Trois-Rivières International Poetry Festival. Audet occasionally associates painting and photography to her writing and illustrated L’oiseau, le vieux-port et le charpentier by the late poet Michel Van Schendel. Her most recent book of poetry, Ma tête est forte de celle qui danse, was published in the fall of 2016.
Mary di Michele
Poet and novelist Mary di Michele is the author of over 12 books, including selected poems, Stranger in You, and the novel, Tenor of Love. Her awards include the CBC Literary Prize, the Confederation Poets Prize, and the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. Luminous Emergencies was short-listed for the Trillium Book Award; Debriefing the Rose and The Flower of Youth for the A.M. Klein Prize. Her latest collection of poetry, Bicycle Thieves, is forthcoming from ECW, spring 2017. Mary lives in Montreal and teaches at Concordia.
Daniel Groleau Landry
Multidisciplinary poet and performer Daniel Groleau Landry’s first poetry book, Rêver au réel, was published in 2012 by L’Interligne and earned him the French language 2014 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Rêver au réel was then translated in English by Howard Scott, and Dreaming Reality came out in the spring of 2015. In 2014, under the stage name HellHeart, he produced an experimental poetry album that connects Rêver au réel to Dreaming Reality in a musical universe. A singer-songwriter who also plans peculiar cultural events, Landry earned the Première mention d'excellence of the Prix des écrivains francophones des Amériques for his latest book, Amorragies, published in January of 2016. He is passionate about literature and performance in any form. His next poetry book, Fragments de ciels, should be coming out in 2018. He is also producing an indie album, which should be released in 2018.
Tracy Hamon
Tracy Hamon was born in Regina, Saskatchewan. She holds an MA in English from the University of Regina. Her first book of poetry, This Is Not Eden, was released in April of 2005 and was a finalist for two Saskatchewan Book Awards. A portion of Interruptions in Glass won the 2005 City of Regina Writing Award and was shortlisted for two Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2010. Her third collection, Red Curls, won the Drs. Morris and Jacqui Shumiatcher Regina Book Award in 2015.
Susan Holbrook
Susan Holbrook’s poetry books are the Governor General’s Award–nominated Throaty Wipes (Coach House 2016), the Trillium Award–nominated Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House 2009), and misled (Red Deer 1999), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. She teaches North American literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. She recently published a textbook entitled How to Read (and Write About) Poetry (Broadview 2015) and is the co-editor of The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson: Composition as Conversation (Oxford 2010). She lives in Leamington, Ontario.
James Langer
Raised in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, James Langer is the author of Gun Dogs (Anansi), which won The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry. He co-edited The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Poetry and lives in St. John’s.
Andy McGuire
Andy McGuire’s first collection, Country Club, was published by Coach House Books in 2015. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Most recently, McGuire was a featured author at the 2016 Bookworm International Literary Festival in China. He lives in Huron County, Ontario.
Hoa Nguyen
Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Hoa Nguyen is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Violet Energy Ingots from Wave Books. Her work has received favourable notice from The New York Times, The Boston Review, Publishers Weekly, and The Walrus, among others. She currently lives in Toronto, where she teaches at Ryerson University, for Miami University’s low residency MFA program, for the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College, and in a long-running, private poetics workshop.
Erika Soucy
Erika Soucy was born in 1987 in Portneuf-sur-Mer, in Quebec’s Côte-Nord. She has worked with theatre stage directors Fabien Cloutier, Alexandre Fecteau, and Maxime Robin, among others. Erika is the author of Cochonner le plancher quand la terre est rouge and of L'Épiphanie dans le front, two books published by Trois-Pistoles. In 2007, she created L'Off-festival de poésie de Trois-Rivières, of which she is still the co-artistic director. Her first novel, Les murailles (VLB éditeur), was published in February of 2016.