Michelle Alfano (emcee) is the author of the personal memoir The Unfinished Dollhouse (Cormorant Books, 2017) which was selected as one of The Globe 100 Best Books of the Year in 2017. Her novella, Made up of Arias, was the 2010 winner of the F.G. Bressani Award for Short Fiction. Her short story “Opera”, on which the novella was based, was a finalist for a Journey Prize anthology.
Trevor
Abes is an artist
from Toronto with a fondness for writing essays and poetry. He was part of the
winning ensemble at the 2015 SLAMtario Spoken Word Festival, and competed in
both the National Poetry Slam and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word as part
of the Toronto Poetry Slam team. His work has appeared in Torontoist, (parenthetical),
untethered magazine, Spacing Magazine, Descant Magazine, The
Rusty Toque, The Theatre Reader, Mooney on Theatre, The
Toronto Review of Books, Hart House Review, and Sequential:
Canadian Comics News & Culture, among others. Reach him on Instagram @TrevorAbes.
Arif
Anwar was born in
Chittagong, Bangladesh, just miles from the Bay of Bengal. He has previously
worked for BRAC, one of the world’s largest nongovernmental organizations, on
issues of poverty alleviation, and for UNICEF Myanmar on public health issues.
Arif has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Toronto. He lives in
Toronto, Canada, with his wife Si (Sandra) Lian. The Storm is his first novel.
Valentino
Assenza has been a
published poet and performing spoken word artist for over the last two decades. He is the author
of four chapbooks of poetry. He is
currently a co-host and a co- producer of Howl
on CIUT 89.5FM. He is due to release
his first full length book of poetry Through
Painted Eyes in the Fall 2018.
George
Elliott Clarke has
published 17 poetry titles--not only collections, but also verse-plays,
libretti, verse-novels, and, currently, epic poetry. he's won a few prizes;
been translated into several languages. He was Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-2015)
and Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-2017). He co-founded, with Michelle
Alfano, "The Love Poetry Festival In honour of Milton Acorn and Gwen
MacEwen".
Rocco
de Giacomo is a
widely published poet whose work has appeared in literary journals in Canada,
Australia, England, Hong Kong and the US. The author of numerous poetry
chapbooks and full-length collections, his latest, Brace Yourselves – on the representation of the individual as it
relates to the Zeitgeist – was published in January 2018, through Quattro
Books. Rocco lives in Toronto with his wife, Lisa Keophila, a fabric artist,
and his daughters, Ava and Matilda.
Paul
S. Fowler grew up in
L'Anse Au Loup, Labrador and currently continues to grow up in Toronto. As of
late, his creative output has largely been geared toward his band, Uncle
Lavender, but he's always happy to finish a short story or two at the behest of
Michelle Alfano.
Luciano
Iacobelli is a
Toronto Poet, publisher and visual artist. He is the author of numerous
chapbooks and five full length books. His most recent book, The Examined Life was published in 2016
by Guernica Editions, and his latest book, Dolor
Midnight, by Quattro books will be released in late January 2019.
Jason
Paradiso is an
editor/poet/writer/artist. He continues to work on his poetry project, Cut Lines & Pulled Quotes, created
with rearranged clippings from dated magazines. They have appeared in a variety
of publications.
