Alumni
Larissa Andrusyshyn's (MA 2010) first poetry collection Mammoth (DC Books, 2010) was shortlisted for the Quebec Writer's Federation First Book Prize and the Kobzar Literary Award. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Irving Layton award, the Malahat Review's Open Season Award, the carte blanche 3Macs prize and Arc Magazine's Poem of the Year. She was recently long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize. Larissa represented the Stingers on the women's rugby team and was named to the 2006 QSSF all-star team and named Concordia's Athlete of the Week for Nov. 7th 2007. She facilitates creative writing workshops in Montreal, mostly for at-risk youth in protective custody. Her second collection is Proof (DC Books, 2014).
Joshua Auerbach's (MA 2003) first book of poems, Radius of Light (DC Books), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. His poems, translations and reviews have been published widely, winning several prizes, including This Magazine's Great Literary Hunt, the Milton Acorn Prize, the Irving Layton Award, the Warren Keith Wright Award, the Ray Burrell Award, the Orion Prize, as well as commendation for the International Hanna Davoren Prize, the River Styx Prize, the Runes Poetry Prize and the Shaunt Basmajian Award. Auerbach attended Harvard, the University of Grenoble, McGill and Concordia, and is Editor-in-Chief of Vallum. He also directs VSFAALE, a charity that promotes aesthetic awareness in Canada.
Oana Avasilichioaei (MA 2002) is a Montreal poet and translator from French and Romanian. Her books include feria: a poempark (Wolsak & Wynn, 2008), Abandon (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005) and a translation of Romanian poet Nichita Stănescu, Occupational Sickness (BuschekBooks, 2006). A collaborative work with Erín Moure, Expeditions of a Chimaera, will be published fall 2009 (BookThug). She has also created visual textworks for galleries in Montreal and Vancouver.
Todd Babiak (MA English literature 1998) published Choke Hold, a novel, in 2000. It won the Henry Kreisel award for best first book, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize and was optioned for a feature film. Todd's second novel, The Garneau Block, was longlisted for the Giller Prize and won the City of Edmonton Book Prize. It was published by McClelland and Stewart. The Book of Stanley, his third novel, was also published by McClelland and Stewart. He was awarded a Praxis Screenwriting Fellowship for co-writing a feature film, The Great One, set on the tragic day Wayne Gretzky announced he was leaving Canada to play for the Los Angeles Kings. Todd is a culture columnist at the Edmonton Journal and does not believe in western alienation.
Chris Banks (MA 1998) was raised in the Ontario communities of Bancroft, Sioux Lookout and Stayner, where his father served postings as a small-town police officer. He took his BA at the University of Guelph, a Master's in Creative Writing at Concordia and an education degree at Western. He currently works as an English and Creative Writing instructor at Bluevale Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. His poetry has previously appeared in Carousel and The Antigonish Review. His first book, Bonfires, was published in Fall 2003 by Nightwood Editions. Bonfires was awarded the Canadian Authors Association Jack Chalmers Poetry Award (2004) and shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award for Poetry (2004). His second book of poetry The Cold Panes of Surfaces (Nightwood Editions) was published in 2006.
Connie Barnes Rose (MA 1997) grew up in small town Nova Scotia. She moved to Montreal and entered Concordia as a part time student in the early eighties and still hasn’t left. In 1992 she won the Irving Layton Award for fiction. Her collection of short stories “Getting Out of Town” was published by Cormorant Books and was short listed for both the QSPELL and the Dartmouth awards. She has published in numerous literary journals such as Matrix, Fiddlehead, B&A as well as anthologies such as “Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops”, “Telling stories-New English Writing From Quebec”. In 2005 she won the CBC/QWF award for her short story “What About Us?” and her story “Civil Wars” was a winner of the 2007 THIS Magazine’s Great Literary Hunt contest.
Brian Bartlett (MA 1978) completed a short-story collection as his thesis, with Clark Blaise as his supervisor. He went on to a do a Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal, with a dissertation on the American poet A. R. Ammons. He has published several books of poetry, including Planet Harbor (1989), Underwater Carpentry (1993), Granite Erratics (1997), The Afterlife of Trees (2002), and, most recently, Wanting the Day: Selected Poems (Peterloo Poets, Cornwall, England; Goose Lane Editions, Canada, 2003), which won the 2004 Atlantic Poetry Prize; and The Watchmaker's Table (Goose Lane, 2008). He has also won two Malahat Review Long Poem Prizes, placed first in the 2001 Petra Kenney Awards, and spent time at both the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. He has edited a volume of prose, Don McKay: Essays on His Works (Guernica, 2006), and two volumes of selected poems, Earthly Pages: The Poetry of Don Domanski (Wilfred Laurier U P, 2007) and The Essential James Reaney (Porcupine's Quill, forthcoming). Many Canadian periodicals have published his personal essays and the many sorts of his prose about poetry, including reviews, tributes, memoirs, columns, journals, and interviews. Since 1990 he has taught Creative Writing and Literature at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.
Arjun Basu (BA 1990) worked for five years at Tundra Books editing children's books and then began work for enRoute, Air Canada's in-flight magazine. In 2001, he became editor in chief, a title he held until 2007. During this time, enRoute was twice named world's best inflight magazine and subsequently named Canada's magazine of the year by the Society of Canadian Magazine Editors in 2008. He is currently editorial director at Spafax. Basu’s first book of short stories, Squishy, was published in 2008 with DC Books. His work has also appeared in publications such as Matrix, The Moosehead Anthology and in AWOL: Tales for Travel Inspired Minds (Vintage).
Dana Bath (MA 2000) is originally from Corner Brook, Newfoundland. She now lives in Montreal, where she teaches English literature at Vanier College and writes. Bath has been an award winning writer since her early college years. She has won prizes from Grain Magazine’s Short Grain Contest, Anvil Press’s International Three Day Novel Contest, and This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Her first published novel Plenty of Harm in God (DC Books) was her Concordia Creative Writing Program Masters thesis. Her book of short stories, What Might Have Been Rain, was published by Conundrum Press in 1998. In 2003, she released a book of short stories, Universal Recipients, with Vancouver's Arsenal Pulp Press. She has also published fiction and non-fiction in Index, Room of One’s Own, Grain, subTerrain, Bitch, Hour Montreal andMatrix.
Raymond Beauchemin (MA 1992) is the editor of 32 Degrees (DC Books, 1993), an anthology of excerpts of creative writing master's theses from Concordia University, including some of the program's best-known names: Nino Ricci, Elisabeth Harvor, Ray Smith, Ann Lambert, Mansel Robinson, Julie Keith and P. Scott Lawrence. With his wife, author Denise Roig (BA 1994; Any Day Now; A Quiet Night and a Perfect End), he edited Future Tense: New English Fiction From Quebec (Véhicule Press, 1997), and The Urban Wanderers Reader (Hochelaga Press, 1995), an anthology of works presented at the Urban Wanderers reading series, which featured more than 100 Montreal and Quebec writers in three pre-Blue Met seasons. Beauchemin is publisher of Hochelaga Press, which in 1998 published Safari West by John A. Williams, winner of an American Book Award that year from the Before Columbus Foundation in the United States. He is the author of Resurrection, an essay examining his Catholic faith, and Salut! The Quebec Microbrewery Beer Cookbook (Véhicule, 2003). His novel Incident on the Jacques Cartier Bridge is due in 2011 from Guernica Editions (Toronto and Montreal). A journalist for more than twenty-five years, he is the former foreign editor of The Gazette in Montreal. He was most recently acting foreign editor of The National, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Jennifer Boire: (BA 1989, MA 1995) lives on the lakeshore with her husband and two teens. She has written book reviews for Prairie Fire and the G & M, and leads workshops and retreats for women on the Feminine. In 2003, A Place of Trees chapbook was published with Over the Moon press. Little Mother, a book of poems and pregnancy journal was published by Hochelaga Press in 1997. A mini-CD of recorded poems, Holding the Song, came out in 2005 with Wiredonwords. Her first foray into theatre was as producer of Sedna Reconfigured, a long poem series by Carolyn Marie Souaid, in a bilingual production with actresses Jennifer Morehouse and France Rolland, directed by Jo Leslie. She and her husband Jacques Nolin are sponsors of the QWF A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. She is currently working on a non-fiction book about peri-menopause. Read her poetry and blogs at www.questinggirl.blogspot.com, www.wisdomforwomen.blogspot.com and www.msmenopause.blogspot.com.
Ronnie R. Brown (BA [Honours English] 1977, MA [Creative Writing] 1980)’s work has been translated into Spanish and Korean and has appeared in over 100 magazines (ranging from ARC to Zygote) in Canada, the U.S.A. and abroad. Her work has also been published in over 30 anthologies. A two time finalist for the CBC Literary Competition, Brown's poetry has also been awarded The Burrell Prize, The Sandburg-Livesay Anthology Prize, and the Tidepool Prize. Brown has had her work adapted for stage (ON FALLING BODIES, 1986, The Atelier of Ottawa's National Arts Centre) and, for more than a decade, she was the host/producer of SPARKS II, a program devoted to literature and the arts on CHEZ-106 F (Ottawa.). Brown is the author of five poetry collections: RE CREATION, 1987 (Balmuir Books, Ottawa, ON); DECISIVE MOMENTS, 1988 (Anthos Books, Perth, ON); PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE, 2000 (Black Moss Press, Windsor, ON); STATES OF MATTER, 2005 (Black Moss); NIGHT ECHOES, 2006 (Black Moss Press.) Three of her collections have received recognition: PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE was short-listed for the Archibald Lampan Award; STATES OF MATTER was the winner of the Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Award; and NIGHT ECHOES was short-listed for the Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Award. Brown lives in Ottawa.
Suzanne Buffam (MA 2003) is the author of one collection of poetry, "Past Imperfect" (House of Anansi), which won the 2006 League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award and was named one of the Books of the Year by the Globe and Mail. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals in Canada and the US, including Boston Review, Poetry, A Public Space, jubilat, Matrix, and Denver Quarterly. She currently lives in Chicago where she serves on the creative writing faculty at the University of Chicago.
Mark Cochrane (MA 1991) lives in Vancouver, where he teaches literature and creative writing at Kwantlen University College, occasionally reviews books for the Vancouver Sun, and studies Law at the University of British Columbia. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the first Breathing Fire. His work has aired on the CBC's Definitely Not the Opera, and he competed in CBC Vancouver's 2002 Poetry Face-Off. He is the author ofBoy Am I, published by Wolsak & Wynn in 1995, and Change Room, published by Talonbooks in 2000. Change Room was shortlisted for the inaugural ReLit Award for poetry. "Outage," from Change Room, was a prize-winner in the 1999 Petra Kenney Poetry Competition. Cochrane has given readings at the Vancouver International Writers Festival and Toronto’s Scream in High Park. His newest work, the poetic fiction “Frivolous Parasol: A Test Case,” appears in Capilano Review.
Devon Code (MA 2007) is from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His work has appeared in anthologies and magazines in Canada and the UK. 'In a Mist,' his debut collection of short fiction, was published by Invisible Publishing. He currently lives in Toronto and was recently a writer-in-residence with the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
Denise B. Crawford (BA, 1981) studied psychology and creative writing while at Concordia. She is now a Montreal-based novelist, author and editor. Her novel Hideaway, published in the U.S. in July 2005. She has written for various publications and was the editor of a national magazine for ten years. Email: crawden@total.net
Marci Denesiuk (MA 2000) was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. Her collection of short stories, The Far Away Home, was published by NeWest Press in 2005 and shortlisted for the McAuslan First Book Prize from the Québec Writers Federation. She is currently working on her first novel. In her twenties, she crossed the country more times than she can recall and, in the process, became an expert in long-distance napping. She once got on a train in Montreal and, except for bleary-eyed bathroom breaks, slept right across the Canadian Shield. When she finally woke in Saskatchewan and went to the bar car for coffee, she was applauded. Since completing her MA, she has been feeding herself by teaching, building websites and getting invited to dinner parties. She currently lives, works and writes in Montreal.
Tamas Dobozy (MA 1993) has published two collections of stories, “When X Equals Marylou" (Arsenal Pulp 2003), and "Last Notes and Other Stories" (HarperCollins 2005) and a novel titled “Doggone” (Gutter Press 1998). His stories and poems have appeared in journals throughout North America, including "Chicago Review," "Northwest Review," and "Colorado Review." His story, "The Inert Landscapes of Gyorgy Ference" was included in the "Also Recommended" section of the "O. Henry Prize Anthology, 2005," and another story, "Like a Salmon Getting Me Down," won the 1995 "sub-Terrain" short fiction contest. His first collection of stories was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. He received a PhD in English from the Department of English at the University of British Columbia in 2000, and currently teaches in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Peter Dubé (MA 1996) is the author of the chapbook Vortex Faction Manifesto (Vortex Editions, 2000), the novel Hovering World (DC Books, 2002) and a collection of short stories At the Bottom of the Sky (DC Books, 2007). His newest book Madder Love (Rebel Satori Press, 2008) is an anthology which explores the subterranean sympathies between queer men’s writing and surrealism. Peter’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Matrix, Index, Borderlines and Queeries (Arsenal Pulp.) His literary work is characterized by dense verbal surfaces and an investigation of the points of intersection between desire, the imagination and the body politic. He also writes extensively on the arts and culture. His essays and articles have been published in newspapers and magazines such as CV Photo, Espace Sculpture and Hour. Peter lives and works in Montreal.
Jennifer Duncan (MA 1998) received the David McKeen Award for best creative writing thesis. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Matrix, Blood & Aphorisms, Prairie Fire and Contemporary Verse 2. She has reviewed books and profiled authors for The National Post, NOW, Books In Canada, and Quill & Quire. Her first book, Sanctuary & Other Stories, was published by DC Books in 1999 and was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award and the Upper Canada Brewing Company Award for Craft in Fiction. Jennifer has read at Word on the Street, the Blueprint Festival and the Vancouver International Writers' Festival. She was a participant at the Banff Studio for Writers and has taught writing at many schools, colleges and universities. Her second book, Frontier Spirit: The Brave Women of the Klondike, was recently released by Doubleday Canada in 2003.
Golda Fried grew up in Toronto and then went to university in Montreal where she wrote poetry and was involved in spoken-word events like the Lollapalooza festival in 1994. Her collection of stories, Darkness Then a Blown Kiss, was published in 1998 and was listed as one of the ten best books of the year by NOW magazine. Her first novel, Nellcott Is My Darling, was shortlisted for a 2005 Governor General's Award for Fiction. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she teaches freshman composition.
Susan Gillis (MA 2002) came to Montreal in 1998 from Vancouver Island, where she had lived and worked since completing her BA at Victoria in 1984. She spent a year teaching English as a Second Language before entering the MA program in Creative Writing, and now teaches English at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. Her thesis, which won the Department’s David McKeen Award for best creative writing thesis, was published later the same year as Volta, her second book. Her first collection, Swimming Among the Ruins, was published in 2000, and she is presently working on her third collection of poems, and is dipping tentatively into prose.
Katia Grubisic (MA 2006) has published poetry, fiction, reviews and translations in various Canadian and international publications, and in a chapbook, Barometer (Delirium Press, 2005). Her first full-length collection of poems, What if red ran out, was published by Goose Lane in 2008 and earned her a nomination as one of three finalists on the shortlist for the Quebec Writer’s Federation A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. She lives mostly in Montreal.
Richard Harrison (MA 1991) is the author of 6 books of poetry including Hero of the Play, which was re-released in 2004 in a 10th Anniversary Edition, Big Breath of a Wish, which was nominated for a Governor-General's Award for 1999, and, most recently, Worthy of His Fall (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005). His work has been published across Canada and internationally, and his poems have been translated into French, Portuguese, and Arabic. Richard's essays on writing, art, and hockey have also appeared in several Canadian and U.S. journals. Currently Richard teaches English and Creative Writing at Mount Royal College in Calgary where he lives with his wife Lisa (whom he met in Montreal) and their two children, Emma and Keeghan.
Elisabeth Harvor (MA 1986) has taught in writing programs at Concordia University, York University, and the Humber School for Writers. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, among them The New Yorker, PRISM International, Best Canadian Storie, and The Best American Short Stories. Her most recent story collection, Let Me Be the One, was also a finalist for the Governor General's Award. Her first poetry book, Fortress of Chairs, won the Lampert Award in 1992 and she has also won a number of prizes for individual poems. Excessive Joy Injures the Heart, her first novel, was named one of the ten best books of the year by the Toronto Star in 2000. She also won the Alden Nowlan Award in 2000, the Marian Engel Award in 2003, and she is the 2004 winner of the Malahat Novella Prize for Across Some Dark Avenue of Plot He Carried Her Body. Her most recent novel, All Times Have Been Modern, set mainly in Montreal in the 1980s, appeared in 2004.
Paul Headrick (MA 1989) is a writer and English instructor at Langara College, Vancouver. His first novel, That Tune Clutches My Heart (Gaspereau Press), was short-listed for the BC Book Prize for Fiction. He has also published a collection of short stories, The Doctrine of Affections (Freehand Books), and a textbook, A Method for Writing Essays about Literature (Nelson Canada). He completed a PhD in English at York University.http://paulheadrick.blogspot.com/
Stephen Henighan (MA 1986) has published three novels, Other Americas (Simon & Pierre, 1990), The Places Where Names Vanish (Thistledown, 1998) and The Streets of Winter (Thistledown, 2004), and three short story collections, Nights in the Yungas (Thistledown, 1992), North of Tourism (Cormorant, 1999) and A Grave in the Air (Thistledown Press, 2007). His short stories have been published in more than 30 journals and anthologies in Canada, Great Britain, Europe and the U.S. Henighan is also the author of the travel book, Lost Province: Adventures in a Moldovan Family (Beach Holme, 2002), the critical study Assuming the Light: The Parisian Literary Apprenticeship of M.A. Asturias (Legenda, 1999) and the essay collectionWhen Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing (Porcupine's Quill, 2002), a finalist for the 2002 Governor General's Literary Awards. He has reviewed extensively for the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail, the Times Literary Supplement and other publications. Henighan teaches Spanish American literature in the School of Languages and Literatures, University of Guelph.
Angela Hibbs (BA 2002, MA 2003) is the author of Passport (DC Books, 2006), Wanton (Insomniac Press, 2009) and Sin Eater (ARP Books, 2014). She lives in Peterborough.
Andrew Hood's book Pardon Our Monsters (Vehicule Press) won the 2007 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first English-language collection of short fiction. After graduating from Concordia's undergraduate creative writing program he filtered beer at the McAuslin Brewery.
Laurence Hutchman (MA 1979) has taught at Concordia University, the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario. At present he is a Full Professor at the Université de Moncton in Edmundston, New Brunswick. He has published seven books of poetry: The Twilight Kingdom (Killaly Press, 1973), Explorations (D.C. Books, 1975), BlueRiders (Maker Press, 1985), Foreign National (Agawa Books, 1993), Emery (Black Moss Press, 1998), Beyond Borders (Broken Jaw Press, 2000) and Selected Poems (Guernica, 2007). In 2002, he co-edited the anthology, Coastlines: the Poetry of Atlantic Canada. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He received an honourable mention in the Alfred G. Bailey Poetry competition in 1995 for Emery and a third prize for "La Roche du Calvaire" in the WFNB's poetry competition in 1997. He has given poetry workshops in Canada the United States, and China and has served as Quebec (1986-89) and New Brunswick / Prince Edward Island (1996-98) representative for the League of Canadian Poets and President of the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick (2000-02).
Adeena Karasick (PhD, Humanities Program, 1997) is a poet / cultural theorist, video and performance artist; as well as the award-winning author of six books of poetry and poetic theory, The House That Hijack Built (Talonbooks, 2004), The Arugula Fugues (Zasterle Press, 2001), Dyssemia Sleaze (Talonbooks, 2000), Genrecide (Talonbooks, 1996), Mêmewars (Talonbooks, 1994), and The Empress Has No Closure (Talonbooks, 1992) Dedicated to the interplay of conflictual dialects, aesthetics, textures that impact on the construction of feminist and cultural identity, her lingusticially provocative, philosophically complex wordplay continues to excite audiences nationally, internationally and locally. She is a Professor of Literature and Cultural Theory at BMCC, City University of New York. Forthcoming is Amuse Bouche: Tasty Treats for the Mouth (Talonbooks 2009).
Ibi Kaslik (MA 2000) is an internationally published novelist and freelance writer whose first book, Skinny, appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List. Her second novel, The Angel Riots, was published in spring, 2008, by Penguin Canada to national critical acclaim. She was Regina Public Library's 22nd Writer in Residence in 2007-2008. Ibi lives in Toronto.
Catherine Kidd is the author and performer of the book-and-CD packageEverything I know about love I learned from taxidermy (Conundrum Press, 1996) and Sea Peach, a book/cd collection of performed stories with original soundscapes by dj Jack Beets. Sea Peach won the Montreal English Critics Circle Award [MECCA] for Best New Text of 2003, and the show was toured to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004. Sections of the show have been featured at festivals across the country and in the States, as well as in England and Norway. Following Sea Peach, was her book/DVD Bipolar Bear. An excerpt from her first novel, Missing the Ark (Conundrum, 2007), was nominated for the prestigious Journey Prize. Catherine’s stories have also been featured on CBC radio, and aired nationally on ZedTV.
Ann Lambert has been writing award-winning stage and radio plays since 1985, and several have been produced in Canada, The United States, Ireland, Greece and Australia. Her first published play, Parallel Lines, (which was also her Master's thesis at Concordia), was produced in Galway, Ireland, and at The University of Oklahoma that year as well. Her other work has also been published in several anthologies: (32 Degrees, The Urban Wanderers Reader,Another Perfect Piece, Going It Alone). Her most recent publication, in January 2004, is included in the anthology She Speaks, edited by Judith Thompson. Her play Very Heaven was first produced at The Centaur Theatre in Montreal, in 1999, published by Blizzard in 1999, and received its European premiere at the Focus Theatre in Dublin in 2004. The Mary Project, (co-written with Laura Mitchell), has been enjoyed by audiences in Athens, Greece in 2000, at infinitheatre in Montreal in 2001, and in Melbourne, Australia in 2002. Ann has been a teacher at Dawson College since 1991. For the last 5 years, she has been directing and producing shows with The Roslyn Players, a children's theatre company specializing in Shakespeare’s plays for kids. From 2002-2004 she headed The Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada.
Rachel Lebowitz (MA 2003) is a writer, teacher, and mother. Her first book, Hannus (Pedlar Press, 2006) was shortlisted for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Award (BC Book Prize) and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. Her children's book, Anything But Hank! co-written by husband Zachariah Wells and illustrated by Eric Orchard, was published by Biblioasis in Fall, 2008. Current work includes Cottonopolis, a collection of prose poems about the Industrial Revolution, and a young adult novel.
Ross Leckie (MA 1982) was born and raised in Lachine, a suburb of Montreal. He attended McGill University for his BA in the Seventies and has a PhD from the University of Toronto, where he wrote a dissertation on Wallace Stevens. He has published a number of academic articles on Twentieth-Century American and Canadian poetry. His own books of poetry include A Slow Light, Signal Editions, 1983, and The Authority of Roses, Brick Books, 1997 andGravity’s Plumb Line, 2005. In 2007 he was named Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Creative Writing at Arizona State University and took up a three-month chair to work on a collection of poetry entitled The Rain’s Superfluity. He is currently the Director of Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, Editor of The Fiddlehead, and Poetry Editor for Goose Lane Editions.
Moberley Luger (MA 2004) was born in Vancouver and is currently living there again completing a PhD in English at the University of British Columbia. Her poems have appeared in several Canadian journals, including The Malahat Review, Grain, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly. Her first book of poetry is Ragtime for Beginners (Killick Press, 2008). Other writing has appeared in Flatiron Magazine, Maisonneuve, Pure Canada and Canadian Literature.
Pasha Malla (MA 2005) has written for Esquire, the Globe and Mail, Walrus and McSweeney's, contributed to CBC Radio's Definitely Not the Opera, and twice had stories in the Journey Prize anthologies. He has had multiple stories nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was and was a pick for Best American Nonrequired Reading (selected by Dave Eggers). He is the author of a book of short stories, The Withdrawal Method and a poetry collection, All our grandfathers are ghosts (Snare Books, 2008). He lives in Toronto where he is the founder of “Now Hear This!” a writers-in-schools program run through Descant Arts & Letters Foundation. Currently, he is working on a novel to be published by Anansi in 2010.
Christina Manolescu (Honours English Literature BA, 1980) is a Montreal teacher and author-publisher. Her original fairy tale, The Northern Isle of Dreams, was published by 'Three Trees Press' in Toronto and favourably reviewed in the children's literature section of the Montreal Gazette. Her published work, including non-fiction and translation, has appeared in local newspapers, educational journals, technical publications, special interest newsletters, and closed captioning for feature films. Her self-published illustrated poetry and prize-winning fiction have appeared in print, on the web, and on cassette tape/CD under the imprint, Prince Chameleon Press. She has been guest visitor and panelist for various organisations and primary schools both in Canada and the UK to stage readings and answer questions about her work. As an active member of the Small Press Group of Britain, she helped organise their annual small press fair in Westminster, London, UK, in 1994. She now presents regular workshop-seminars on Self-publishing in Montreal. In 2001 she co-founded the Invisible Cities Network, an author-publisher support group which hosted its first public Creative Arts Conference in September, 2005. Web site:http://www.invisiblecitiesnetwork.org. Email: christina@princechameleon.com
David McGimpsey was born and raised in Montreal. He is the author of four collections of poetry (Lardcake, Dogboy, Hamburger Valley California and Sitcom) and one collection of fiction (Certifiable). His most recent collection, Sitcom (Coach House Books), was nominated for the A.M. Klein Award and was named by the Quill and Quire as one of “The Books of the Year.” David has a PhD in English Literature and is the author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning study Imagining Baseball: America’s Pastime and Popular Culture. David plays guitar and sings in the rock band Puggy Hammer and also works as a stand-up comedian. His travel writings frequently appear in The Globe and Mail, he writes the "Sandwich of the Month" column as well as feature articles for EnRoute magazine and, recently, was nominated for a National Magazine Award. David McGimpsey teaches creative writing at Concordia University and is the fiction editor for DC Books’ Punchy Writers Series.
Stephen Morrissey (BA 1973, Sir George Williams) was born in Montreal, of several generations of Irish descent. He has published six books of poetry, as well as chapbooks. During the 1970s he participated in poetry events with the Vehicule Poets. He has edited two literary magazines, “what is”, a journal of experimental poetry, and “The Montreal Journal of Poetics”. Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems 1978-1998 was published by the Muses’ Company, Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is currently working on a collection of new poems, entitled Girouard Avenue. He is founding editor of Coracle Press and publishes on-line poetry chapbooks. Morrissey has an M.A. from McGill University. He teaches English and Humanities at Champlain College, Montreal.http://www.stephenmorrissey.ca/
Sachiko Murakami (MA 2006) Her first collection of poetry, The Invisibility Exhibit (Talonbooks, 2008), was shortlisted for the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards. She lives and works in Vancouver where she is a collective member of the Kootenay School of Writing and the managing editor of The Capilano Review.
Nick Papaxanthos (MA 2014) was born in Vancouver, and grew up in Lefkosia, Cyprus. He completed an undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where he also co-edited a comedy newspaper and gigged with a jazz quartet. In 2014, he was awarded the John Lent Poetry/Prose Award. His first collection of poetry, Love Me Tender, was recently published with Mansfield Press.
Branka Petrovic (MA 2010) completed an M.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing at Concordia University. She holds a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy from McGill University. She was co-Editor-in-Chief of Headlight Anthology and her poetry has appeared in Branch, Arc Poetry Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review and The New Quarterly, among others. Her work was twice long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize (2012, 2015) and shortlisted for the 2013 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition. Born in Belgrade, she lives in Montreal and is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets.
Alessandro Porco (MA, 2004) is a poet, critic, and scholar. His most recent collection of poetry is Augustine in Carthage, and Other Poems (ECW Press, 2008). He is also the author of The Jill Kelly Poems (ECW Press, 2005). Currently, at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Porco is completing a dissertation on the subject of hip-hop poetics. His monthly hip-hop column, “In Extremis,” is available at Maisonneuve Magazine Online(www.maisonneuve.org).
Sina Queyras (MA 1995) is a playwright, poet and fiction writer. SLIP, her first collection of poems was published in 2001. Sina's poems and fiction have appeared widely in anthologies, journals and online. She has twice been a finalist for the CBC Literary Competition for both poetry and fiction. Two plays were produced in Toronto. She is also the author of the poetry collectionTeethmarks (Nightwood, 2004). While at the Vermont Studio Center on a Dodge Fellowship, she began a collection of poetry titled Lemon Hound, published in spring 2006 with Coach House. She has since edited Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, for Persea Books and her most recent collection of poetry is Expressway (Coach House, 2009). She is working on a collection of short fiction and lives in Montreal where she teaches creative writing at Concordia University.
Mansel Robinson (MA 1992) is a winner of the City of Regina Award, Geist Magazine's Award for Distance Writing and is a two-time winner of Saskatchewan's John V. Hicks Award. He has been Writer in Residence at the Berton House in Dawson City Yukon, Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton, at the University of Windsor and the Regina Public Library. His plays includeCollateral Damage, Colonial Tongues, The Heart As It Lived, Downsizing Democracy, Spitting Slag, Ghost Trains and Street Wheat. His book of short fiction and poetry, Slag, was published to acclaim in 1997 and his plays have been produced in Ottawa, Kitchener, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Calgary. Picking Up Chekhov premiered in Calgary at Alberta Theatre Projects Enbridge playRites Festival, January 24-March 5, 2006; Scorched Ice premiered in Saskatoon at Last Exit Theatre in October 2005.
Nino Ricci (MA 1987) His first novel, the best-selling Lives of the Saints (which began as his MA thesis), garnered international acclaim, appearing in over a dozen countries and winning a host of awards, including, in Canada, the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and in England, the Betty Trask Award and the Winifred Holtby Prize. It was followed by In A Glass House and Where She Has Gone, which completed the trilogy. Where She Has Gone was shortlisted for the Giller Prize for Fiction.The Lives of the Saints trilogy was recently adapted for a television miniseries starring Sophia Loren, Nick Mancuso, and Kris Kristofferson. His novelTestament, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Pearson Canada Readers’ Choice Award, and was the winner of the Trillium Award. Ricci's newest novel, The Origin of Species, is the winner of the 2008 Governor General's Award for Fiction. Born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy, Ricci also studied at York University in Toronto and at the University of Florence, and has taught both in Canada and abroad. He now lives in Toronto, where he writes full time.
Trish Salah (BA 1992, MA 1994) is originally from Halifax and is in the process of completing her Doctorate in English at York University. Her fiction and poetry have been published in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies and her first book of poetry, Wanting in Arabic, was published by TSAR Books in 2002. She was an associate editor at FUSE Magazine and in 2003/04 and taught at York and Concordia Universities. She is a member of the Stern Writing Mistresses and with Mirha-Soleil Ross and Bobby Noble, is co-editor of Counting Past 2, a multidisciplinary collection of transsexual and transgender art and criticism.
Barrie Sherwood (MA 1999) published his first novel, The Pillow Book of Lady Kasa, in 2000. His second novel, Escape From Amsterdam (Granta Books, 2007), was a project he began while living in Fukuoka, Japan. He currently lives in England, where he teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
Rebecca Silver Slayter (MA 2010) is a freelance writer and editor. Her writing has appeared in The Walrus, Quill & Quire, Maclean's, The Antigonish Review, The National Post and The Toronto Star, and she received a Hart House Short Fiction award and a Hart House Poetry award. Her first novel, In the Land of Birdfishes, was published by HarperColllins in 2013 and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She was also named one of CBC’s Ten Writers to Watch. A co-editor of Brick literary journal, Rebecca lives in Cape Breton, where she is at work editing her second novel.
Johanna Skibsrud completed her MA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Concordia University in 2005, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in English Literature at Universite de Montreal. She is the author of the 2010 Giller Prize winning novel, The Sentimentalists, and two collections of poetry, Late Nights With Wild Cowboys (Gaspereau 2008), which was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, and I Do Not Think That I Could Love A Human Being (Gaspereau 2010), shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Originally from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, Johanna currently lives between Montreal and Tucson, Arizona.
David Solway (MA 1988) is the author of many books of poetry including the award-winning Modern Marriage; Bedrock; Chess Pieces; Saracen Island: The Poetry of Andreas Karavis; The Lover’s Progress and Franklin’s Passage. Among his prose publications, Education Lost won the QSPELL Prize for Nonfiction and Random Walks was a finalist for Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. A collection of literary/critical essays, Director’s Cut, appeared in the Fall of 2003. In 2007, he was awarded the A.M. Klein Prize for his collection titled, Reaching for Clear: The Poetry of Rhys Savarin. In the collection, Solway translates work by Dominica's celebrated young poet Rhys Savarin. Solway’s work has also appeared in such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, Canadian Literature, Descant, International Journal of Applied Semiotics, liberté, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Parnassus, Partisan Review, Saturday Night andThe Sewanee Review. He was appointed writer-in-residence at Concordia University for 1999-2000 and is currently a contributing editor with Canadian Notes & Queries and an associate editor with Books in Canada.
Carolyn Marie Souaid (MFA 1995) is a teacher, book reviewer, and the author of four collections of poetry, most recently "Satie’s Sad Piano" (Signature Editions, 2005). A French translation of her work “Snow Formations” was published by Les Éditions Triptyque in 2006. Her work has been produced for CBC-Radio, and has been published nationally and internationally. More recently, she has become involved in projects aimed at moving poetry off the page and into public spaces. She is the co-producer (with Endre Farkas) of two major Montreal events: "Poésie en mouvement / Poetry in Motion" (the poetry-on-the-buses project, 2004) and "Cirque des mots / Circus of Words," a multilingual cabaret of performance poetry (2005). Her second book, October, set against the backdrop of the events of the FLQ crisis of 1970 was chosen to represent Montreal in a display celebrating “Montreal World Book Capital” for 2005. In December of 2005 she was part of a Canadian delegation of poets sent to Paris for participation in an international forum on the inhumane treatment of prisoners of conscience. Three of her books have been shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize.
Joanne Stanbridge (MA 1988) also has a Master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from McGill and worked for ten years at Westmount Public Library in Montreal. She is now a reference librarian in Kingston, Ontario. She has published articles, poems, bibliographies and book reviews in literary and reviewing journals including Queen's Quarterly, Dalhousie Review, Antigonish Review, Canadian Children's Literature and Montreal Review of Books. She illustrated a picture book called My Four Lions (text by Bernice Gold, Annick Press, 1999) and is the author of two books for 9-12 year olds—a novel calledThe Leftover Kid (Red Deer College Press, 1997) and a non-fiction book calledFamous Dead Canadians (Scholastic Canada, Ltd., 2003) which was chosen as an honour book at theSilver Birch Awards. http://www.joannestanbridge.com/
Carmine Starnino (MA 2000) is a poet, essayist, critic, and editor of Signal Editions. His first poetry collection, The New World was nominated for the 1997 QSPELL A.M. Klein Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His second collection Credo won the 2001 Canadian Authors’ Association Prize for poetry and the David McKeen Award from Concordia’s Department of English. His collection of poetry, With English Subtitles, was awarded the Québec Writers’ Federation’s A.M. Klein Prize. He also published a collection of critical essays,A Lover’s Quarrel and an anthology called The New Canon. He was raised in Montréal, where he still lives.
Sarah Steinberg (BA 2004) left Canada shortly after graduating from Concordia's creative writing programme. In San Diego she helped edit a textbook on advertising, in Morocco she worked as an import-exporter, in Vancouver she played a reality-tv version of herself on a show about home-staging, and in Washington DC she was a ghostwriter. Her work has appeared in Broken Pencil Magazine, Matrix, and THIS magazine. She recently published her first book of shorts stories, 'We Could Be Like That Couple...' (Insomniac 2008). In 2008 she was nominated for the Journey Prize. She is currently the Canadian editor of Vice Magazine and lives in Montreal.
Todd Swift (BA 1993) is a poet, anthologist, editor, reviewer, teacher and cultural activist. He has an MA in Creative Writing from The University of East Anglia (UEA). He was born on Good Friday, 1966, and grew up in St-Lambert, Quebec. At high school and university levels he was often the top-ranked debater of his generation, and was President of CUSID. He is the author of three collections of poems, most recently Rue du Regard (DC Books, Montreal, 2004). He is an editor of six international anthologies, such as 100 Poets Against The War (Salt, Cambridge, 2003). He is a contributing editor for Matrix, poetry editor of www.nthposition.com and recently guest-edited "The New Canadian Poetry" section for New American Writing, 2005. He is editing The Carcanet Book of 20th and 21st Century Canadian Verse, due out later this decade. He reviews regularly for Books in Canada. Poems of his have appeared widely in America, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the UK, in periodicals such as: Agenda, Gargoyle, Geist, The Globe and Mail, Jacket, The London Magazine, Poetry London, The Shop, Stand, Vallum, and in the anthologies Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets (Persea Books, New York, 2005) and The New Canon (forthcoming). He is a Core Tutor at The Poetry School. He was Oxfam GB's Poet-in-residence, 2004-2006 and Visiting Lecturer at London Metropolitan University. He lives in London's West End with his wife.
Moez Surani’s (MA 2005) poetry and short fiction have been published internationally, including in Harper’s Magazine, The Awl, The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry 2013 and Best Canadian Poetry 2014. He has attended artists residencies in Finland, Italy, Latvia, Switzerland and Taiwan, and among the awards his writing has won is the Antigonish Review’s Poetry Prize and a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, which supported a five-month research stint to India and East Africa. When his first collection of poetry, Reticent Bodies, was published, one critic assessed the book’s impact: "Reticent Bodies is that rare book that has the power to be a lynchpin, a hinge in the history of Canadian poetry.” In 2012, Surani published a second collection, Floating Life, which was described as suffused with “stunning, simple images.” More recently, he has been working on collaborations and on interdisciplinary pieces, including one with the Institute of Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles.
Juliet Waters (M.A. 1998) was barely finished her graduate prose workshop before she went over to the dark side and became a full-time book critic. This has been her main occupation since then, though she did manage to turn in a thesis (after negotiating one last extension for the ice storm.) She is a contributing editor at The Montreal Mirror, and has also contributed to The CBC, Quill & Quire, The Gazette and Flare. She is regularly syndicated in weeklies across the U.S. Her reviews, columns and personal stories have been linked in The Norton Anthology of English Literature Companion Website, Reviewsofbooks.com and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. She is also an occasional travel writer, and wrote Around Montreal with Kids for Fodor's in 2004.
Margaret Webb (MA 1994) multi-tasks as screenwriter, fiction writer, magazine journalist and university instructor. She won a Walt Disney Studios screenwriting fellowship in 1999 and wrote two screenplays for the studio. She also attended the Canadian Film Centre as a screenwriting resident and tv writer. Her poetry was published in "Desire, Red Wine, High Heels" an anthology of Four Toronto writers (Insomniac Press, 1995) and in "The Last Word" an Anthology of New Canadian Poetry (Insomniac Press, 1995). Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous Canadian journals while her magazine pieces have been published by Canada's leading consumer publications, including Saturday Night, Toronto Life, Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Equinox, Cottage Life etc. Her novel Apples to Oysters was published by Penguin in 2008 and it chronicles her cross-Canada travels, introducing readers to farmers from across the country and the challenges they face. She currently teaches magazine writing at Ryerson University
Barry Webster (MA 2002) published his first collection of short stories, The Sound of All Flesh with The Porcupine's Quill in 2005. The Sound of All Flesh was the winner of the Relit Award for best Canadian short story collection in 2005 and a finalist for the Hugh MacLennan Prize. His fiction has been shortlisted for the National Magazine Award and the CBC-Quebec Prize. He has also written non-fiction for many publications including The WashingtonPost and The Globe and Mail. Originally from Toronto, he currently lives in Montreal where he teaches English literature at Marianopolis College.