“The Briefcase” appeared in Spinetinglers Magazine, Ballygowan, England in 2009 and in Moonlight Tuber Magazine, Australia, in 2010.
“Elephant Air” appeared in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue of FreeFall Magazine as the winning entry of FreeFall’s 2010 Prose and Poetry Contest with guest judge Douglas Glover.
“The Extremists” was commissioned for, and given a public reading at, the Calgary edition of Wrecking Ball 2011, a national event to raise awareness of arts issues in advance of the federal election of that year.
“A Year of Coming Home” appeared in The Lounge Companion, Volume 2 from Lion Lounge Press, Oxford, England, 2010.
About the Contributors
Sherveen Ashtari is of Persian and Arab background. She has been published online and in print in several magazines, including Thrive in Life, Off the Coast, Persepolis, re:moved, Canadian Immigrant and other publications. After spending many childhood summers in Tehran and experiencing firsthand life under the Islamic Regime and comparing that to the stories she heard of pre-revolutionary Iran from her mother, she decided to write this story, which is part of larger work. She currently lives and works in Vancouver.
A native of Thunder Bay, Joan M. Baril has had short fiction published in Room, Prairie Fire, Other Voices, The Orphic Review, Ten Stories High, Canadian Stories, The Copperfield Review, The Artery, The Story Teller Magazine, and other journals and newsletters. For ten years, her columns on women’s and immigrant issues appeared in Thunder Bay Post, Hot Flash, and Northern Woman’s Journal. Her blog (www.literarythunderbay.blogspot.com) follows the Thunder Bay literary scene.
Chris Benjamin is the author of Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada, winner of the 2012 Best Atlantic-Published Book Award and finalist for the Richardson Non-Fiction Prize, and the critically-acclaimed novel, Drive-by Saviours, winner of the H.R. Percy Prize and shortlisted for Canada Reads 2011 and a ReLit Prize. Chris’ creative works have appeared in, or been heard on, VoicePrint Canada, Descant, Arts East, Third Person Press, Nashwaak Review, Pottersfield Press, Rattling Books, The Society and The Coast. His website is www.chrisbenjaminwriting.com. He is married to Miia, who makes the world a better place for young people. They have two kids.
Catherine Brunet has lived in Ottawa, Toronto, the Northwest Territories, and rural Ontario. She currently teaches high school in the Ottawa Valley and lives with her partner, Sean, and their bulldog. Catherine has always been interested in using language to explore questions of history and identity. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian literary journals including Queen’s Quarterly and Vallum Magazine.
Michelle Butler Hallett is the author of the story collection The shadow side of grace (2006), and the novels Double-blind (2007, shortlisted for the 2008 Sunburst Award), Sky Waves (2008), and deluded your sailors (2011), all with Killick Press. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction (2007) and Hard Ol’ Spot (2009). Butler Hallett is working on a third novel set in her alt-history Republic of Newfoundland and Labrador. Upcoming projects include a historical novel trilogy about faith, treachery, art, and politics. Butler Hallett lives in St. John’s.
Ethan Canter’s poetry and stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies in Canada, America, England, and Australia. His debut novel, here, there and nowhere, was published in Canada in 2006. Ethan holds degrees in writing from both Canada and England.
R. Jonathan Chapman is a playwright and author from Calgary. In 2008 he won the Grand Prize for the Alberta Playwriting Competition for his play The Wall: Berlin, 1973. In 2010 his play Kingdom of Three was produced by Sage Theatre as part of the Ignite! Festival of Emerging Artists, and Romeo and Hamlet (co-written with Kevin Stefan) was produced in New York City as part of GAYFEST NYC 2010. His first political involvement occurred as a policy writer and copyeditor for the 2011 Nenshi for Mayor campaign.
Jim Conklin is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at UBC, and has published his writing in magazines and books such as Razorcake, Fugue, and Wreck. He lived in Colombia for five years, and now lives in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
J. Paul Cooper, originally from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, has a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Saint Mary’s University. He now lives in Calgary and is a member of the Writers Guild of Alberta. His articles and essays have been published in magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. His short fiction was included in Next Stop Hollywood: Short Stories Bound for the Screen (2007) and Canadian Tales of the Fantastic (Volume 1, 2011). Fluffy: A Cat’s Tale, a novel for young readers, was published in 2001.
Michael Donoghue grew up in a rural Nova Scotian fishing village and now resides in Vancouver. In between he lived in the UK where he met many interesting people and held various jobs. “The Problem of Being Really Good with Names” is based on some of these experiences. Michael has had more than fifty very short stories in publications such as Nanoism, Thaumatrope, and Neo-Opsis. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mpdonoghue
Born and raised in Philadelphia, David Fleming has lived in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, his entire adult life. He is a writer, student, and parent, as well as a marathon runner, beard wearer, and lifelong Phillies fan. Though his preferred mode of transportation is the bicycle, he owns a minivan, and often takes public transportation. David was greatly inconvenienced during the Metro Transit work stoppage of 2012.
Jack Godwin grew up in Vancouver and enjoyed teaching history and English until he and wife Ann moved to Naramata, an idyllic village in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. Jack is the songwriter and lead singer for The Kettle Valley Brakemen, a heritage act that tells stories and sings songs about B.C.’s colourful steam rail history. In the past, Jack has contributed to educational journals and musical publications and for three years was a columnist for North of 50° magazine. He is a member of the Naramata Writers Group and “Gotcha!” is his first published work of fiction.
Shane Joseph is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories. His work After the Flood won the best futuristic/fantasy novel award at the Canadian Christian Writing Awards in 2010. His short fiction has appeared in international literary journals and anthologies. His latest novel, The Ulysses Man, was released in 2011. His blog is widely syndicated. Shane divides his time between Toronto and Cobourg, Ontario, where he plays guitar for a rock band, writes, and scoots off from every year to travel. www.shanejoseph.com
Fran Kimmel was born and raised in Calgary. Her stories have appeared in literary journals across Canada and have twice been included in Journey Prize anthologies. Her debut novel, The Shore Girl, was published by NeWest Press in 2012. Fran writes and teaches in central Alberta, where she currently lives with her husband and overly exuberant silver lab.
Bretton Loney has had short stories published in Toward the Light: Journal of Reflective Word & Image, subTerrain, Between the Lines: The Canadian Journal of Hockey Literature, and the 2011 Canadian Tales of the Mysterious anthology. Loney is a former member of the board of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and is working on a collection of short stories. A native of Bow Island, Alberta, he lives in Halifax and works as a communications director with the Government of Nova Scotia.
Matthew R. Loney is a novelist, poet, and short story writer based out of Toronto. Loney’s writing has been published widely in North American literary journals and his short story “The Stampede’ was included in Clark-Nova’s inaugural anthology Writing Without Direction: 10 1/2 short stories by Canadian authors under 30. He has recently breached the Asian continent, publishing in Mumbai’s Nether Magazine and Hong Kong’s Cha Magazine. View more of his work at www.matthewrloney.com
Susi Lovell lives and writes in Montréal and Québec’s Eastern Townships. She came to fiction writing after a lifetime of performing and teaching movement and physical theatre, and a spell writing on dance for the Montreal Gazette. Her stories have appeared in Grain, Fiddlehead, Kudzu Revi
ew, Blue Lake Review, and FictionBrigade.
A. S. Penne is the author of the creative nonfiction memoir Old Stones (TouchWood Editions, 2002), an excerpt from which was shortlisted for the 2002 Western Magazine Awards. Several stories from Penne’s short fiction collection Reckoning (Turnstone Press, 2008) have won awards on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably the UK’s acclaimed Ian St. James Award and the USA’s Writers’ Digest award. Penne has published numerous fiction and nonfiction works in North American and UK literary journals, periodicals and anthologies. In 2011, Coming Back, her first stageplay, won a professional development grant from Access Copyright. A. S. Penne is a graduate of the UBC MFA (Creative Writing) program.
Lori Pollock lives with her husband and five-year-old son in Saskatoon, where the punishing prairie winters offer a brilliant excuse to stay inside and invent individuals with a knack for making spectacularly poor choices. She has a Ph.D. in literature from Queen’s University and runs a freelance writing company, but also enjoys getting her own characters into and out of—and back into—trouble. Her work has previously been published in Spring and online by Red Claw Press.
Andrew F. Sullivan was born in Peterborough, Ontario. He received his MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. Sullivan’s debut short story collection All We Want is Everything is forthcoming from Arbeiter Ring Publishing in Spring 2013. Sullivan’s fiction publications include work in Joyland, EVENT, The Good Men Project, Little Fiction, Grain, Dragnet Magazine and a number of other journals, both online and in print. Sullivan no longer works in a warehouse, but is currently the associate fiction editor for The Puritan.
Everything Is So Political Page 21
