Locations of Grief (by Catherine Owen; Catherine Graham & Jenna Butler)

Theresa Kishkan has lived on both coasts of Canada as well as in Greece, England, and Ireland. She currently lives on B.C.'s Sechelt Peninsula with her husband and three children. They run a small private press, High Ground Press. Kishkan is the author of a novel (Sisters of Grass), a novella (Irishbream), and several books of poetry.

Katherine Bitney is the author of four books of poetry, a collection of essays on nature and the text for a choral piece. A fifth collection of poems is under construction. She has worked as editor, mentor, writing instructor and arts juror for over three decades. She lives, gardens and writes in Winnipeg.

BIOGRAPHY/IES Jenna Butler is a poet, professor, essayist, and organic farmer from northern Alberta. She teaches Creative Writing at Red Deer College. Her books include Seldom Seen Road, Magnetic North, Wells, Aphelion, and an award-winning collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail. Her memoir, Revery: A Year of Bees, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction.

Ben Gallagher is a poet, essayist and new father, currently in the middle of a PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, researching non-linear pedagogy and poetic practices in community poetry workshops. Recent poems can be found in untethered, Sewer Lid, The Puritan, (parenthetical) and Arc. He lives in Lunenburg, NS.

Catherine Greenwood has lived and worked in British Columbia, New Brunswick, China and southeast England. Previous job titles include publications analyst, foreign expert, financial aid adjudicator and pet sitter. She has published two collections of poetry, The Pearl King and Other Poems and The Lost Letters. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, and has been recognized with several prizes, including a National Magazine Gold Award. She now lives in South Yorkshire where, as a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield, she is pursuing an interest in Scottish Gothic poetry.

Onjana Yawnghwe is a Shan-Canadian writer and illustrator who lives in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Kwikwetlem First Nation. She is the author of two poetry books, Fragments, Desire (Oolichan Books, 2017), and The Small Way (Dagger Editions 2018), both of which were nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She works as a registered nurse. Her current projects include a graphic memoir about her family and Myanmar, and a book of cloud divination.

Poet, editor and teacher Sharon Thesen (born Tisdale, SK) has spent almost all her life in British Columbia. After studies at Simon Fraser University, she began teaching in 1975 at the then-Capilano College in North Vancouver, where for many years she edited The Capilano Review. Artemis Hates Romance, her first book of poetry in 1980, was followed by thirteen more, three of them finalists for the Governor General's Award: Confabulations, 1984; The Beginning of the Long Dash, 1987; and The Good Bacteria, 2006. She edited The Vision Tree, a selected poems by Phyllis Webb (Governor General’s Award, 1982), two editions of the The New Long Poem Anthology (1991 and 2001), and, with Ralph Maud, two volumes of correspondence between American poet Charles Olson and book-designer and Joyce scholar Frances Boldereff (1999 and 2012). At UBC Okanagan, where she taught from 2003 to 2012, Thesen and poet Nancy Holmes co-edited Lake: A Journal of Arts and Environment. The Receiver (2017) is her most recent collection, and in 2021, The Wig-Maker was published, a book-length poem created in concert with Janet Gallant from Gallant’s memoirs. Since 2020, the annual “Sharon Thesen Lecture” at UBC Okanagan honours Thesen’s contribution to poetry and poetics. Her archives are held at the McGill University Library in Montreal and at Simon Fraser University’s Special Collections in Burnaby, BC.

Lynn Tait is a Toronto-born poet/photographer. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals including Vallum, FreeFall, and in over one hundred anthologies. She’s also published a chapbook and co-authored a book with four other poets. She currently resides in Sarnia, Ontario.

Lisa Richter is the author of a book of poetry, Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017). Her work has previously appeared in The New Quarterly, CV2, The Puritan, The Malahat Review, Literary Review of Canada and the anthology Jack Layton: Art in Action (Quattro Books, 2013). Her next collection of poems, Nautilus and Bone, is forthcoming with Frontenac House in fall 2020. She lives in Toronto.

NIKKI REIMER (she/her/they/them) is a multimedia artist and writer and chronically ill neurodivergent prairie settler currently living in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. She has been involved with arts and writing communities, primarily in Calgary and Vancouver, for over twenty years. They are the author of four books of poetry and multiple essays on grief. GRIEFWAVE.com, a multimedia, web-based, extended elegy, was launched in February 2022. Frequent themes Reimer explores through their work include feminism, the body, the Anthropocene, late capitalism, death, grief, loss, and animal subjectivity. Though their practice began in the literary arts, Reimer's artistic work has taken turns into multiple forms of interdisciplinary artmaking, including visual art and video, installation work, and performance practice. "Trigger Warning," a play commissioned by Swallow A Bicycle Theatre Company for their ten year anniversary retrospective, explores how gossip and the whisper network can both combat and reify rape culture within Canadian cultural circles. Reimer's work has been extensively reviewed, often noting their embrace of dark humour and feminist refusal. Visit reimerwrites.com.

James Picard has exhibited extensively in close to two hundred art exhibitions throughout North America and Europe, and next to world-renowned art legends such as Picasso, Matisse, Miró, and Warhol. He has also taught at several universities and has released three books on his art. He was the first artist to exhibit his paintings at the historical Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco, part of his The Dark & The Wounded painting series and world art tour, which he filmed and turned into a documentary film that won awards across the North American film festival circuit in 2017/18, culminating in a screening in May 2018 at the 71st Cannes International Film Festival in France. He currently resides in California.

Steven Heighton received the 2016 Governor General’s Award for poetry for The Waking Comes Late (Anansi). He was also a finalist in 1995 for The Ecstasy of Skeptics (Anansi). His poetry and stories have received five National Magazine Awards and have appeared in London Review of Books, Poetry (Chicago), Tin House, Brick, Zoe- trope, Best American Poetry, The Walrus, Best English Stories, TLR and five editions of Best Canadian Poetry. He has also published novels, short story collections and two books of essays, and he reviews fiction for The New York Times Book Review.

Alice Major, Edmonton’s first poet laureate, has published 11 books of poetry and essays, many of which explore her long-standing interest in the sciences. She is the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta 2017 Distinguished Artist Award. Her most recent publications with UAP are Standard candles and Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science. You can find her online at www.alicemajor.com

David Haskins wanted to write ever since Enid Blyton sent him a handwritten postcard when he was seven. He also wanted to become a veterinary surgeon. He settled for mentorships under CanLit’s A-listers Joe Rosenblatt, Austin Clarke, Matt Cohen, John Herbert, P.K. Page and others, and a career teaching English to high schoolers. His poetry books, Reclamation (Borealis, 1980) and Blood Rises (Guernica, 2020), and his literary memoir This House Is Condemned (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013) top a long list of published works that have won first place awards from the CBC, the Ontario Poetry Society, the Canadian Authors Association, gritLIT and Arts Hamilton. He continues to live in the family home in Grimsby, Ontario.

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of eight previous books. Her memoir Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey was a Sunday Times bestseller, and her story collection Hunger was a Ferro Grumley Award finalist. Her work has been published in the New York Times and Salon.

Catherine Graham is a poet, novelist and creative writing instructor. She is the author of six acclaimed poetry collections, including The Celery Forest, a CBC Best Book of the Year and finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and CAA Poetry Award and her debut novel, Quarry, was a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Book Award for Contemporary Fiction and Fred Kerner Book Award and won the Miramichi Reader’s “The Very Best!” Book Award and an Independent Publisher Book Awards’ gold medal for Fiction. She holds an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University (UK). Her poems have been translated into Greek, Serbo-Croatian, Bangla, Chinese and Spanish and have appeared in The Malahat Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Glasgow Review of Books, Exile Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Gutter Magazine and have been broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster, anthologized in The White Page / An Bhileag Bhan: Twentieth Century Irish Women Poets and The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Vol IV & V. A finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, she has won the Arc Award of Awesomeness and her poems have been nominated for the 2020 National Magazine Award by Exile Magazine. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ Poetry NOW, she leads their monthly book club and is also an interviewer for By the Lake Book Club.

Marilyn Dumont is a Metis writer who was born and raised on Metis Road Allowance in small town Alberta. She is the author of A Really Good Brown Girl (Winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award- League of Canadian Poets), green girl dreams Mountains (Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry - Writers Guild of Alberta), that tongued belonging (Winner McNally Robinson Poetry Book of the Year and McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year), The Pemmican Eaters (Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry - Writers Guild of Alberta, and forthcoming collection coming in 2024. Marilyn’s work has been widely anthologized, represented in artwork and poetry installations. She has received the Alberta Lieutenant Governor General’s Distinguished Artist’s Award and the League of Canadian Poets Lifetime Membership Award. Marilyn was guest anthologist for The Best Canadian Poetry 2020.

Alice Burdick is the author of four poetry collections, including Book of Short Sentences (2016). Her work has appeared in several anthologies and magazines and was shortlisted for the Lemonhound Poetry Prize in 2014. She is the co-owner of Lexicon Books in Lunenburg and lives in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia.

Daniel Zomparelli is the Editor-in-Chief of Poetry Is Dead magazine and co-podcaster at Can't Lit. He also co-edits After You, a collaborative poetry project. He is the author of the poetry collections Davie Street Translations and (with Dina Del Bucchia) Rom Com, both published by Talonbooks. His debut story collection Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2017. He lives in Vancouver.

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Locations of Grief

An Emotional Geography

Catherine Owen

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