Authors Index

Richard Scarsbrook is the author of ten books, including the novels The Troupers, The Indifference League, the National Post Bestseller Rockets Versus Gravity, and The Monkeyface Chronicles, which won the 2011 OLA White Pine Award. His short stories and poems have also appeared in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Descant, Existere, Prairie Fire, and NeWest Review, amongst many others. His first produced screenplay, Royal Blood, was an official selection at many international film festivals, and won Best Short Film at the TIFF-associated Milton Film Festival. He has served as Writer in Residence for the Toronto District School Board, and the Orangeville, Richmond Hill, and the Toronto Public Libraries. He also teaches creative writing at George Brown College and The Humber School for Writers.

J.L. Scharf is the Creative Director of an advertising agency, and her written work has earned her awards not only in Canada but also in New York, Chicago, and London. This is her first novel.

Brenda Schmidt is a naturalist and visual artist living in Creighton, a mining town on the Canadian Shield in northern Saskatchewan, where she explores creative paths between the natural and digital worlds. Author of four books of poetry, including More Than Three Feet of Ice (Thistledown, 2005) and A Haunting Sun (Thistledown, 2001), as well as a book of essays, her work has been published, performed, shown and broadcast across Canada and was part of a poetry installation at the University of Exeter (UK). A past reviewer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry for Quill & Quire, she founded the Ore Samples Writers Series in 2016 and currently serves on the Sage Hill Writing board of directors. Her work is included in The Best of The Best Canadian Poetry in English: Tenth Anniversary Edition (Tightrope, 2017). She is the seventh Saskatchewan Poet Laureate (April 2017 to December 2018).

Anna Marie Sewell writes at prairiepomes.com. Her poetry is part of the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers production Ancestors&Elders (world premiere April 27). Her debut collection, Fifth World Drum (Frontenac Press, 2009) will be joined in September by For the Changing Moon (Thistledown Press). Anna Marie was Edmonton’s 4th Poet Laureate (2011?13), and created The Poem Catcher public art installation at City Hall. She curated over 1,000 pages of community writing collected there, posted at webofvisions.wordpress.com. A multi-disciplinary artist, Anna Marie’s practice centres on collaborative projects, and her writing plays across boundaries of language, culture, and worldview.

Kelly Shepherd is an active writer and performer. He has been part of numerous poetry reading events including creative collaborations with other writers, musicians, and visual artists; has had participation in The Rasp and the Wine reading series in Edmonton, the Spoken Word on the Move series in Kelowna, and the Raving Poets series in Edmonton. He has been a kindergarten teacher in South Korea and a construction worker in northern Alberta. He has a Religious Studies MA from the University of Alberta, with a thesis on sacred geography, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC Okanagan. He has written five poetry chapbooks: The First Metaphor (2014), Fort McMurray Tricksters (2014), if one petal falls (2012), the bony world (2010), and Circumambulations (2003); his writing has been published in numerous journals including The Goose, The Coastal Spectator, Lemon Hound, and Geist. He is also a poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter. Originally from Smithers, British Columbia, Kelly currently lives and teaches in Edmonton.

Greg Simison was born in Guildford, England in 1946 and came to Canada as a child. He is a playwright, a former newspaper columnist, and the author of three previous collections of poetry: Disturbances, The Possibilities of Chinese Trout, and What the Wound Remembers. After living in most Canadian provinces at one time or another, he currently calls Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan home.

Theressa Slind is a writer and librarian based in Saskatoon. Her fiction has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. Only If We’re Caught is her first book.

In her work as children's librarian at the Grande Prairie Alberta Public Library, Linda Smith sat on award committees for the Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year for Children Award, the Young Adult Award and the Vicky Metcalf Award, and was both President and Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Association of Children's Librarians.

Anne Sorbie was born in Paisley, Scotland and she lives and writes in Calgary. She has worked as a chamber maid, a waitress, an office mail clerk, an accounts payable clerk, a revenue accountant, a production accountant, a supervisor of revenue, gas and oil marketing accounting, a technical writer, and a freelance corporate writer. Anne has taught English at Red Deer College and Creative Writing at Mount Royal University.

Craig Spence’s first novel for young readers, Josh and the Magic Vial (Thistledown Press), was nominated for a BC Book Prize. His second novel Einstein Dog (Thistledown Press) was nominated for the BC School Librarians Association Chocolate Lily Award. Spence lives in Chemainus, BC.

Debbie Spring has been writing for over twenty years. Her publication The Righteous Smuggler from The Holocaust Remembrance Series (Second Story Press) was shortlisted for CBC’s Young Canada Reads. Her short story “The Kayak” was published in the anthology Takes: Stories for Young Adults (Thistledown Press), which won the Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Award and the Saskatchewan Book Award for Education. She has been three times winner of the Brendon Donnelly Children’s Literature Award for Excellence. Debbie Spring lives in Thornhill, Ontario. http://www.debbiespring.com/

Bill Stenson is a fiction writer born in Nelson, BC. He didn't live there long. He has had stories published in many of Canada's fine line of literary magazines and has a short story collection titled Translating Women and a novel titled Svoboda, both with Thistledown Press. Fiction is his main interest, but he reads a fair amount of poetry and he loves memoirs. He was head cook and bottle washer at CanadianMemoirs.com for years where he was privileged to interview many of North America's finest memoirists. He has a book in electronic form called Memoir Writing for Smart People available for download. Stenson co-founded The Claremont Review, an international literary magazine that publishes young-adult writers aged 13 to 19. He worked for the magazine as an editor for more than twenty years and is proud that this magazine is still alive and well to this day. Bill Stenson lives in Victoria, B.C. with his wife poet Susan Stenson.

Coby Stephenson is a writer presently based in Regina, Saskatchewan. She received a BA Hons from the University of Regina in 2009. Coby has presented the tales of Violet Quesnel at various conferences and 'open mic' events and has used it to explore her studies of fiction.

A prolific writer, Richard Stevenson has published twelve collections of poetry (including Why Were All the Werewolves Men? (Thistledown, 1994), A Murder of Crows: New & Selected Poems (Black Moss Press, 1998) and Nothing Definite Yeti (Ekstasis Editions, 1999)) and four poetry chapbooks. His work has over 400 magazine, newspaper, and journal appearances to its credit, and can also be found in many textbooks and anthologies. Richard won the 1994 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for From the Mouths of Angels (Ekstasis, 1993). Richard is a long-time teacher and has worked in classrooms from Victoria, BC to Nigeria. For the past fifteen years, he has been a permanent staff member of Lethbridge Community College in Alberta. He is an extremely active arts organizer, readings host, editor and book reviewer. He is also the co-founder of Naked Ear, a poetry-jazz performance ensemble.

Catherine J. Stewart is a poet from Victoria, BC. Her poems have been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and for the Malahat Review’s Far Horizon Award for Poetry. Her work is published in Grain, untethered, Room, and The Dalhousie Review and is included in the League of Canadian Poets’ anthology, Heartwood: Poems for the Love of Trees. Her appreciation of the natural world (she is an avid kayaker and hiker) is apparent in her poetry. Catherine has a BA in writing from the University of Victoria, and an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She divides her time between her family homestead in Spillimacheen, where these poems were born, and her home in Victoria, BC.

Jennifer Still's poetry has appeared in numerous Canadian journals such as spring, Other Voices, New West Review, Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire and Event, and has been broadcast on CBC radio. She is co-founder of the chapbook publisher, JackPine Press and lives in Saskatoon with her husband and daughter. Saltations is her first book of poetry.

Burdened by the notion that a career should encompass everything, Sophie Stocking changed her major so often she narrowly escaped a degree in General Studies. Chapters in social work, architecture, and motherhood followed. She finally noticed that she’d always been writing, and as for encompassing everything, writing fit the bill. From there she found the courage to pursue fiction at the Alexandra Writers Centre and went on to study with Aritha van Herk at the University of Calgary. Corridor Nine is her debut novel.

Andrew Stubbs is a prolific editor whose work includes Rhetoric, Uncertainty, and the University as Text, a collection of articles on writing and writing theory by Canadian and American compositionists. He co-edited The Other Harmony: The Collected Poetry of Eli Mandel, and published Myth, Origins, Magic, a study of Mandel’s poetics. Stubbs has published articles and reviews on literature, literary theory, psychoanalysis, and creative writing. His first poetry collection, White Light Primitive, was published by Hagios Press in Spring 2009.