Francine Andrew has been a on-call receptionist for like, ten years, but her passion is writing. She’s been writing for at least the same amount of time: short stories and poems, mostly poems though. She is married with four children and one grandchild and her inspiration comes from them mainly. She is a member of the Lil’wat First Nation in Mount Currie, British Columbia. This is her first publication.

Poet and critic Stephen Collis is the author of two books of poetry, Mine (New Star 2001) and Anarchive (New Star 2005), as well as numerous chapbooks, including The Birth of Blue (1997), Anima/lung (1998), Midden (2001) and Blackberries (2005). His essays on contemporary poetry and poetics have appeared in many Canadian and American journals, and he is the author of two forthcoming book-length studies, Phyllis Webb and the Common Good (Talonbooks 2007) and Through Words of Others: Susan Howe/George Butterick, a Correspondence (ELS 2006), and has edited Companions & Horizons: An Anthology of Simon Fraser University Poetry (WCL 2005). A member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective, he teaches American literature, poetry, and creative writing at Simon Fraser University.

Lynn Edge lives in Texas and enjoys the RV lifestyle which
provides material for her writing.  Her haibun have appeared in
Kaleidowhirl, Flashquake, WHCReview and Simply Haiku. "Late Snow
" received an honorable mention in the Third R.H. Blyth Award
2004.

Daphne Marlatt often works in a genre-cross between poetry and narrative. Her most recent title is a chapbook, Seven Glass Bowls (2003) from Nomados Press. Her 2001 collection of poetry, This Tremor Love Is (Talonbooks), was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the Pat Lowther Memorial Prize, and the Second Annual ReLit Award. Also in 2001 Ronsdale Press issued an expanded third edition of Steveston, her 1974 classic cycle of poems in collaboration with the photographs of Robert Minden. Readings from the Labyrinth, a collection of essays, letters and journal entries over fifteen years appeared from NeWest Press in 1998. Her second novel, Taken, appeared from House of Anansi in 1996, and the first, Ana historic (originally published by Coach House Press, 1988), was reissued by Anansi in 1997. This novel was also translated by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné and published in Quebec as Ana historique (les éditions du remue-mènage, 1992). Marlatt's other poetry titles include Salvage (1991), Ghost Works (1993), Touch to my Tongue (1984), and collaborative works with Betsy Warland and Nicole Brossard.

Rajinderpal S. Pal’s love of poetry began at a very young age. When his poet father died, Pal inherited not only his father’s bedroom but his collection of books. Part of this story is told in Pal’s first collection of poetry, pappaji wrote poetry in a language i cannot read (TSAR, 1998), winner of the 1999 Writer’s Guild of Alberta Award for Best First Book. Pal has performed his work across Canada, in Wollongong, Australia, with Writers For Change and in Los Angeles at ArtWallah 2003. He has had work published in translation in Portugal and Brazil. Pal was voted Best Local Author in a 2001 Reader’s Poll for Fast Forward Magazine. Pal’s latest collection, pulse (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002), has received overwhelmingly positive reviews and was short-listed for both the W.O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Alberta Book Award for Best Book of Poetry. Pal performed a new poem for CBC’s Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) during National Poetry Month, April 2004.

Aaron Peck, a Vancouver, BC, poet, and prose writer, is currently the assistant editor at Greenboathouse Books and on the board of directors at Artspeak. He has published a number of chapbooks, written poetry, reviews and fiction for numerous magazines and journals, some of which include, or are forthcoming in, The Gobshite Quarterly, CBC Radio Three, Open Letter, and Fillip.

Camilla Pickard holds an MA in English Literature and is currently completing a Creative Writing MFA at UBC. She worked as an ESL instructor in Indonesia before teaching at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Her poetry has appeared recently in The Capilano Review and West Coast Line. She also writes a girl zine, the Janet.

Meredith Quartermain has published and read her work in Canada, the U.S. and Britain.  Chapbooks include Terms of Sale (Meow 1996), Abstract Relations (Keefer Street 1998), Veers (Backwoods Broadsides 1998), Spatial Relations (Diaeresis 2001), Inland Passage (housepress 2001), The Eye-Shift of Surface (Greenboathouse 2003), and [with Robin Blaser] Wanders (Nomados 2002).  Her book of prose poems, A Thousand Mornings (Nomados 2002), is about Vancouver's oldest neighbourhood, the dockside area of Strathcona.  Her work has also appeared in Canadian Literature, Literary Review of Canada, Matrix, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line, filling Station, Queen Street Quarterly, Prism International, Raddle Moon, Five Fingers Review, Chain, Sulfur, Tinfish, East Village Poetry Web and other magazines.

Matt Rader grew up in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. He is the editor of Mosquito Press, a literary chapbook publisher, and the co-founder of Crash: Vancouver’s Indie Writer’s Fest. His poems have received praise from many quarters, including sub-TERRAIN, Broken Pencil, Geist and This Magazine. In 2004, he was featured in Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets. He currently lives and works underground in Vancouver.

Poet and visual artist Renee Rodin was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec. She came to Vancouver in the 60s and in the 80s began R2B2 Books along with its reading series which she ran for 8 years. Rodin is the author of Bread and Salt (Talonbooks, 1996) and the chapbook Ready for Freddy (Nomados, 2005).

Lanie Shanzyra P. Rebancos is a poet, writer and reviewer who lives with her family in Philippines. Many of her poems have been published in different literary journals like Canadian_Zen_Haiku, Ancient Heart magazine, Makata International Contemporary Journal, Full Moon magazine, Lit.Org, Sigla magazine, A Long Story Short, All-Info About Poetry, Jacobyte Poetry,  LYNX, Japan-Foreigner, AboutTeens magazine, Autumn Leaves, Poetic Voice, and Fresh! Literary magazine. She is currently working on her first book, a collection of short stories and poems.

SHARON THESEN is a Vancouver poet and editor, author of eight books of poetry (including two selected poems). Her latest book of poems, A Pair of Scissors (2000), won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Confabulations (1984) and The Beginning of the Long Dash (1987) were shortlisted for Governor-General’s Awards. She has edited an award-winning edition of Phyllis Webb’s poetry, two editions of The New Long Poem Anthology, and, with Ralph Maud, Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff: A Modern Correspondence (Wesleyan 1999).

Jacqueline Turner is a Canadian poet who lives in the Horseshoe Bay area of Vancouver, British Columbia. She has published two book length collections of poetry with ECW Press: Into the Fold (2000) and Careful (2003), as well as numerous chapbooks. She runs a literary webzine called "The News," writes poetry reviews for The Georgia Straight, and is on the board of a local gallery called Artspeak whose mandate is to forge connections between writers and artists. She founded a literary magazine called filling Station that has been publishing international writing for the last 10 years. She teaches creative and critical writing at Simon Fraser University and the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver. She has travelled to teach in First Nations communities in various locations across British Columbia. Her current work explores the trace of memory through geography, by merging images and texts as poetic installations. She is also working on a manuscript which uses the poetic diction of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene in a contemporary context to see differing literary moments collide and resound.

Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1939 but grew up in the West Kootenays of British Columbia. He was one of the founding editors of TISH at the University of British Columbia. After graduate school in Buffalo, he returned to the Kootenays in the late 1960's. He recently retired from teaching creative writing and poetics at the University of Calgary. He has been editorially involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. He has published poetry, short fiction, and criticism. His publications include, Diamond Grill. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1996, Alley Alley Home Free. Red Deer, Alberta: Red Deer College Press, 1992, So Far. Vancouver: Talonbooks 1991, Music at the Heart of Thinking Red Deer, Alberta: Red Deer College Press, 1987, Waiting For Saskatchewan. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1985. He won the Howard O'Hagan prize for short fiction, Writers' Guild of Alberta, for Diamond Grill, 1996, the Stephanson Prize for Poetry, Writers Guild of Alberta, for So Far, 1991, and the Governor-General's Award for Poetry, for Waiting for Saskatchewan, 1985. He now divides his time between Vancouver and the Slocan Valley.

Rita Wong is an Assistant Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Her work investigates the intersections and relationships between decolonization, social justice, gender, racialization, labour, migration, and contemporary poetics. She is the author of monkeypuzzle, a book of poems for which she received the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop Emerging Writer Award. Her poems have appeared in various publications such as The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War, Swallowing Clouds, Ribsauce, Hot and Bothered, Another Way to Dance, Fireweed, Tessera, West Coast Line, CV2, XCP (Cross Cultural Poetics), Prairie Fire, and more. Her essays can be found in Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English, BC Studies, West Coast Line, Essays on Canadian Writing, and more.