We are so pleased to share with you our full line-up of vol.13 featured readers! Our featured readers are Susan Alexander, M.E. Boothby, Franklin K.R. Cline, Doris Corcese, Leah Duarte, Hollay Ghadery, Tikva Hecht, Alexander Hollenberg, Rob Omura, Samantha Louie-Poon, and Kelly S. Thompson! Read their profiles below!
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Reader profiles:
Susan Alexander is the author of two poetry collections, Nothing You Can Carry (2020) and The Dance Floor Tilts (2017), both with Thistledown Press. Her work has won multiple awards, most recently the 2022 Vancouver City Poem Contest. She also received the 2019 Mitchell Prize. Susan currently hosts In/Verse, the monthly reading series for the Federation of B.C. Writers. Her poems appear in anthologies and literary magazines in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, and have ridden the bus as part of Poetry in Transit. She lives on Nexwlélexm/Bowen Island, British Columbia, the traditional and unceded territory of the Squamish people.
M.E. Boothby is a neuroqueer, temporary, human-shaped assemblage of matter and microorganisms created in Ontario, but currently existing in St. John’s, Newfoundland on the traditional territory of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq. She has been published in Ultraviolet, Collective Reflections, Lake Effect 7 and Lake Effect 8, with upcoming work in Gothic Nature. She is writing a creative thesis of speculative fiction at Memorial University of Newfoundland, with a special interest in nonhuman imaginings. She has a soft spot for monsters, mycorrhizal fungi, sassy cephalopods and other misunderstood entities.
Franklin K.R. Cline is the author of So What and The Beatles’ Second Album, both via Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. An enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, he is an educator in Kansas City, Missouri, where he lives with Six and Olivia.
A former analyst, profiler and researcher, Doris Corcese is a graduate of the 2017 Vancouver Manuscript Intensive program and was runner-up in the Federation of B.C. Writers’ 2021 Creative Nonfiction Contest. In 2022, she was published in The Humber Literary Review and recently finished writing her first novel.
Leah Duarte is a Portuguese-Canadian poet and fiction writer. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s MA in English program, her thematic interests are shaped by her experiences grappling with diasporic distance and the violence of female identity. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The /tƐmz/ Review, The Four Faced Liar, Thuya Poetry Review and elsewhere. She is the winner of the gritLIT 2022 Youth Flash Fiction contest, and is currently at work on her first poetry collection. Find her on Twitter @llduart_
Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in various literary journals and magazines, including The Malahat Review, Room, CAROUSEL, THIS, The Antigonish Review, Grain and The Fiddlehead. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in Spring 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, is due out with Radiant Press in spring 2023.
Tikva Hecht is a poet and editor. Her work can be found in CV2, Canadian Literature, Grain and Modern Literature, among other publications.
Alexander Hollenberg is a Canadian writer and professor of narrative theory whose work can be found in such journals as Riddle Fence, Poetica Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada and English Studies in Canada. In 2021, his suite “Cod Jigging Near Twillingate” was longlisted for the CBC poetry prize, and most recently two of his poems were shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize.
Samantha Louie-Poon is a settler of Chinese ancestry based in Edmonton, Alberta. As a nurse, researcher, and writer, Samantha is passionate about storying the untold narratives of the Asian diasporas in so-called Canada. Samantha is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Alberta where she is documenting the experiences of anti-Asian racism using storytelling methods. Through poetry, Samantha explores concepts of Asianness, belonging and erasure, and invites readers to contemplate these tensions within taken-for-granted spaces
Rob Omura calls Calgary, Alberta home, where he lives with his common-law wife and three too many cats. He has resigned himself to finding cat fur in everything he eats. His fiction and poetry appear or are forthcoming in journals in the United States, Canada and abroad including the New York Quarterly, 34thParallel, Chaffin, CLR, Freshwater, Caustic Frolic, Chaotic Merge, New Mexico Review, Talon Review, barnstorm and many others. He has been nominated for the Pushcarts.
Dr. Kelly S. Thompson is an award-winning writer and holds an MA and PhD in Creative Writing. Kelly has published widely, with essays appearing in Chatelaine, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail and more. Her military memoir, Girls Need Not Apply, was an instant national bestseller
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