2024 Festival

Ariel Gordon(she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 Territory–based writer, editor and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. Her previous work of nonfiction,Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests, was shortlisted for the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. She has five collections of poetry with the latest  Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024).

Danielle Daniel is a writer, an award-winning children’s book author and an illustrator. Like many Francophones with origins in Quebec, she shares an ancestral link to the people who inspired Daughters of the Deer, a first novel that springs from the story of what happened to the daughter of an Algonquin woman and a soldier/settler from France. Her picture books include Sometimes I Feel Like a Fox (winner of the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award and a Best 100 title at the New York Public Library) and You Hold Me Up, shortlisted for the 2018 Marilyn Baillie Award, among other honours. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and recently moved to Manitoulin Island with her family.

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, (MiroLand, 2021) and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, (Radiant Press, 2023). Hollay’s short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, is due out with Gordon Hill Press in 2024.

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. She has published two chapbooks, You Must Imagine the Cold Here (Scrivener, 1997) and Fault Lines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023), as well as five full books of poetry, including: braille on water (Penumbra Press, 2001), The Narcoleptic Madonna (Penumbra Press, 2012),

Some Other Sky (Black Moss Press, 2017), These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019), and Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022). Kim is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada (2023-25), a full member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Greater Sudbury from 2016-18.

Yvonne Blomer’s sixth book of poems is Death of Persephone: A Murder, a mystery based on the Persephone myth, the noir mystery genre and the ongoing violence to girls and women.  Previous books include The Last Show on Earth, 2022, which explores grief, love and climate change. She is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer who has edited five anthologies, most recently: Hologram: Homage to PK Page. Yvonne holds an MA with Distinction from the University of East Anglia and is the past poet laureate of Victoria, BC.  She lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people.

Rod Carley is the award-winning author of three previous works of literary fiction (humour): Grin Reaping, Kinmount, and A Matter of Will.  He’s been  long-listed twice for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, received an IPPY Silver Medal for Best Regional Fiction, and was a Foreword Review INDIES Bronze Winner for Humour. His short stories and creative non-fiction have appeared in a variety of Canadian literary magazines. He was a finalist for the  Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Prize and the 2009 winner of TVO’s Big Ideas/Best Lecturer Competition and a proud alumnus of the Humber School for Writers. Rod has lived in Toronto, North Bay, and recently returned to his hometown of Brockville.

Jennifer Alicia (she/they) is a queer, mixed Mi’kmaw and settler (German/Irish/Scottish) multidisciplinary artist originally from Elmastukwek, Ktaqmkuk (Bay of Islands, Newfoundland), now residing in Toronto. She is a two-time national poetry slam champion and her work has been featured in Canthius Magazine, NOW Magazine, CBC and imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival to name a few. Jennifer Alicia co-edited a poetry anthology titled The Condor and the Eagle Meet and has a debut chapbook titled Mixed Emotions. Most recently, she participated in the Animikiig Creators Unit through Native Earth Performing Arts, working on her debut play titled To Go Home.