Issue 32 Contributors

Mona Angéline is an unapologetically vulnerable artist, athlete, and scientist. She honors the creatively unconventional, the authentically "other." She shares her emotions because the world tends to hide theirs. She is a new writer. Her work has been accepted for publication in a number of magazines—see more here.

Sharon Berg attended the Banff School of Fine Arts Writing Studio in 1982 and was accepted to Banff’s Leighton Artist Colony in 1987. She taught in Ontario after studying to become a teacher with a focus on First Nations Education: B.A./Laurentian U.; B.Ed/U of T; M.Ed/York U; and D.Ed/UBC. She received a Certificate in Magazine Journalism from Ryerson U and is an alumni of Humber College’s Writing Program. Sharon founded and operated the international literary E-Zine Big Pond Rumours (2006-2019) and its associated press, releasing chapbooks of Canadian poets as prizes for the magazine’s contests. Her poetry appears as full books with Borealis, Coach House, and Cyberwit, and she has four chapbooks with BPR Press. Sharon’s short fiction is with Porcupine’s Quill, and her nonfiction appears with BPR Press. Her writing appears across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Chile, England, Wales, Netherlands, Germany, Siberia, Romania, India, Persia, Singapore, and Australia. Her 3rd poetry collection Stars in the Junkyard was a Finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards, and her narrative history The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School won a 2020 IPPY Award for Regional Nonfiction. When she retired from teaching, she opened Oceanview Writers Retreat in Charlottetown (Terra Nova National Park) Newfoundland.

bonnyCD is a writer, film- and rug-maker living and working in rural Alberta (treaty 7 territory). Their book-length poem The Repoetic: After Saint-Pol-Roux is available from Gordon Hill Press (2023), and their most recent chapbook GLADDENER (Anstruther) and ephemera Banazir Galbasi Doubtfiring with the farmerettes... (solipCYST) were released fall 2025. They sometimes also unhappily publish as Benjamin C. Dugdale for so-called 'professional continuity.'

Louise Carson lives in a bungalow surrounded by gardens. She paid for it by teaching music. Now she just writes. Her three collections of poetry are The Truck Driver Treated for Shock, haiku, Yarrow Press, 2024; Dog Poems, Aeolus House Press, 2020; and A Clearing, Signature Editions, 2015. She also writes mysteries and historical fiction, and her latest in these genres are The Cat Laughs, Signature, 2025; and Third Circle, land/sea press, 2022. Louise lives near Montreal, Quebec.

Born in England, Sarah Clowes grew up near Chicago, Illinois. She currently lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota where she teaches college English, reading, and literature and lives with her husband, daughter, and rat terrier. Her stories and poems have appeared in Chanter Magazine, The Wittenberg Review, The Manuscript, Enigma Magazine, and The Chrysalis Reader. She also lived in New Mexico on a reservation for several years. While she was there, she won first place in a poetry slam in Gallup, New Mexico.

Kelly Norah Drukker is a Montreal-based poet and nonfiction writer. She is the author of Small Fires (McGill-Queen’s University Press), a collection of poems that won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Concordia University First Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. Petits feux, the French-language translation by Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné, was published by Le lézard amoureux in 2018. Most recently, Kelly's work has appeared in The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada, Burning House Press (UK), and Rabbit Poetry (Australia). Kelly holds an MA in English and Creative Writing and a PhD in interdisciplinary Humanities from Concordia University.

Leah Duarte is a Portuguese-Canadian poet. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s MA in English program. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Forest Floor: Collected Works Volume 1, The /tƐmz/ Review, untethered magazine, and The Four Faced Liar. Her poetry has received a 2023 Best of the Net nomination, and she was a finalist for the 2025 Mississauga Arts Awards' Emerging Literary Artist category. Recently, she completed her debut poetry collection intertwining Portuguese folklore, religious themes, representations of mental illness, and depictions of girlhood through a speculative lens, funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Mississauga Arts Council.

Instagram: @ leahlduarte
Website: http://leahlduarte.wixsite.com/home

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, reviews and publishes poetry, prose, hybrid work and visual poetry from the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples (colonially known as Ottawa). Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a long-poem collection about her near-death health crisis. Sign up to her Substack: Amanda Thru the Looking Glass to read quotes of the week, recipes, rants and musings and to get early access to Creatively Yours, her 2026 collaborative offerings with Charles Earl. Visit AmandaEarl.com for information on publications, honours and forthcoming readings.

Kimberley Gilmour is a freelance writer who is published in The Antigonish Review, ARIEL, and The Windsor Star. She is currently reviewing poems by Eva H.D. and Holly by Stephen King. She has a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Philosophy and Women‘s Studies from Trent University. She also has a B.Ed and a B.A. in English Literature.

Pamela Hensley is the Managing Editor of yolk literary journal and creator of the podcast How I Wrote This. Her fiction has been published in The New Quarterly, Queen's Quarterly, Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, The Dalhousie Review, The Antigonish Review, EVENT magazine and elsewhere.

Pauline Holdstock writes literary fiction, essays and poetry. Her books have been published in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Australia, Brazil and Portugal as well as in Canada, where her work has been named a finalist for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize. Her fiction has been anthologized in both Canada and the U.K. and has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the BC Book Prizes. It has been awarded Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction and City of Victoria Butler Book Prize, and won the Malahat Review novella contest. Her non-fiction has appeared in national newspapers and magazines and has been broadcast on CBC radio. It has been awarded the Prairie Fire Prize for Personal Journalism. Pauline has taught creative writing at the Victoria School of Writing and at the University of Victoria and served on the faculty of the Wired Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Salma Hussain writes poetry and prose. Her fiction has recently appeared in The Humber Literary Review, The Temz Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Ex-Puritan and Prism International. Her young adult novel, The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan, about a young girl’s immigration and menstruation journey, was published by Penguin Random House in 2022. It was selected for ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List and shortlisted for the Geoffrey Wilson Historical Fiction prize. A chapbook of her poems from Baseline Press releases this summer 2025. You can find her on Instagram: @salma_h_writes.

Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe, Swan X, is a budding poet from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has been published in Weganda Review, Cloudscent Journal, Serotonin, Isele, Dawn Review, Poetry Sango-Ota, and Poetry ColumnNND amongst others. He is the winner of the 2024 Kukogho Iruesiri Samson Poetry Prize, co-winner of the 2024 Poetry ColumnNND Chapbook Award, the 2024 Folorunsho Editor's Prize for Poetry and has been shortlisted for the 2025 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. You can find him listening to his favorite singer Lana del Rey, or writing a poem. He tweets @mesomaccius.

PW Jarungpiterah is working on her first poetry collection. Her work has appeared in places such as The Malahat Review, TNQ, Rattle, Room, carte blanche and The Antigonish Review.

Nelson Chukwu John is a Nigerian writer and curator. His works of fiction have appeared in Isele Magazine, Brittle Paper, Ambit Magazine and other places.

Hannan Khan—a nefelibata, poet, and scholar of literature & linguistics from Pakistan. He combs through moments of love, death, delirium & relational complexities, seraphically tracing what’s breathed and what flickers unbreathed. His pen grooves between haibun & heartbreak, ghazals & ghost games, intimacy & apocalypse. Winner of the Native Voices Award 2025 for his poetry collection Isn't Cooked Is Cursed, he thrives on distorting ordinary until it sings. When he craves reprieve, he devours dark thrillers like he’s dissecting crime scenes—psychological, raw, unpredictable. He sips coffee, reads Manto & lets the world unravel. His work has appeared in Failed Haiku, IHRAM Literary Magazine, Graveside Press, SpecPoVerse, Eye To The Telescope, Abyss & Apex, and The Headlight Review, and is forthcoming in The Literary Hatchet, Notch Magazine, Winds Of Asia & Native Voices Anthology. Poetry is his altar; Fiction, his rebellion. He writes to unsettle, to unearth, to unlace. For a glimpse into his life, find him on Instagram: @hannan.khan.official

Ziyana Kotadia is a gender justice advocate and writer based in Calgary, Alberta. Armed with an MPhil in Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge, Ziyana has served in leadership roles across several organizations, including as the inaugural Chair of the anti-violence not-for-profit Safe Campus Coalition and on the Board of Directors for Plan International Canada. Passionate about the intersection of politics, art, and social justice, Ziyana has published articles in numerous outlets, including the Toronto Star, Edmonton Journal, and Ottawa Citizen. Recognized as one of Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30 and a Rising Star National Finalist with the Women Empowerment Awards, Ziyana currently leads strategic communications for a gender-based violence prevention research hub.

Anson Leung is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Commerce program. He is an Alberta-based writer who loves all forms of writing, including poetry and article writing. In his spare time, he loves playing tennis and board games.

Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S., and other countries. Her 2025 chapbook is a collaborative collection by four poets, Liminal Spaces. She is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (poetry chapbook) and A Breeze You Whisper: Poems and Calla & Édourd (novel).

Sumaiya Matin wears many hats as a writer, social worker, educator and public policy professional. She holds a Master of Social Work and is currently working toward her Master of Fine Arts (in Creative Writing) at the University of British Columbia. In 2021, she released a literary memoir titled The Shaytan Bride: A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2021). She lives in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), but you can also find her online at @sumaiya.matin on Instagram or www.sumaiyamatin.com

Marcie McCauley's work has appeared in Room, Other Voices, Mslexia, Tears in the Fence and Orbis, and has been anthologized by Sumac Press. She writes about writing at marciemccauley.com and about reading at buriedinprint.com. A descendant of Irish and English settlers, she lives in the city currently called Toronto, which was built on the homelands of Indigenous peoples—Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabeg, Huron-Wendat and Mississaugas of New Credit—land still inhabited by their descendants.

Maria Meindl is the author of a memoir, Outside the Box, a novel, The Work, as well as many short fiction and non-fiction pieces, including in The Temz Review. In 2005, she founded the Draft Reading Series, which is still going strong after 20 years. She teaches Feldenkrais movement classes, and runs a webinar series called The Work, Straight Talk on Craft and Method, about the history of wellness, fitness and performer-training methods.

Amanda Merpaw is the author of the collection Most of All the Wanting and the chapbook Put the Ghosts Down Between Us. She has been a finalist for the Montreal Fiction Prize, The Fiddlehead Fiction Contest, and the Poem of the Year contest. Amanda’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in various literary magazines, including Arc Poetry Magazine, The Capilano Review, The Fiddlehead, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere. She is currently Associate Poetry Editor at Plenitude Magazine and a member of the editorial board at Anstruther Press. You can connect with her via her website at amandamerpaw.com or via Instagram @amanda.merpaw.

Sreeja Naskar is a young poet based in India. Her first poetry collection, Sunflowers and Silhouettes, was published by BriBooks. Her work has appeared in Poems India, Cordite Poetry Review, ONE ART, Ink Sweat and Tears, Crowstep Journal, The Chakkar, Trace Fossils Review, and elsewhere.

Per Olvmyr writes fiction, prose and poetry. He lives in Malmö, Sweden, and has been published by literary magazines such as Poetry Wales, Bombay Literary Magazine, Gone Lawn, Glänta, Takahē and Propagule magazine. His work was nominated for Best Small Fictions in 2025. He can often be found in parks engaged in long conversations with Basset Hounds.

Itto and Mekiya Outini write about America, Morocco, and all those caught in between. Their fiction and nonfiction can be read in The North American Review, Modern Literature, Fourth Genre, The Good River Review, MQR, Southland Alibi, Chautauqua, The Stonecoast Review, Mount Hope, Hidden Peak Review, Jewish Life, The Brussels Review, DarkWinter, Eunoia Review, Lotus-Eater, The Thieving Magpie, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. Their work has received support from the MacDowell Foundation, the Steinbeck Fellowship Program, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. They’re collaborating on several books and running The DateKeepers, an author support platform. They hold an MA and an MFA, respectively, from the University of Arkansas.

Jon Riccio teaches literature and creative writing at Western Michigan University and the University of West Alabama. A past Lambda Poetry Fellow, his most recent chapbook, The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse, was published by Seven Kitchens Press.

Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs. Work has appeared in magazines and anthologies in Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The author of 28 books: 8 novels, 7 short story, 13 poetry (most recent, more songs the radio won't play, 2025, ECW), as well as several produced plays. An autodidactic intellectual classicist [reformed]. Speaks semi-fluent English and controversial French.

Aaron Schneider is a queer settler living in London, Ontario. He is the founding Editor at The /tƐmz/ Review, the publisher at the chapbook press 845 Press, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing Studies at Western University. His stories have appeared in The Danforth Review, Filling Station, The Ex-Puritan, Hamilton Arts and Letters, Pro-Lit, The Chattahoochee Review, BULL, Long Con, The Malahat Review and The Windsor Review. His stories have been nominated for The Journey Prize and The Pushcart Prize. His novella, Grass-Fed (Quattro Books), was published in Fall 2018. His collection of experimental short fiction, What We Think We Know (Gordon Hill Press), was published in Fall 2021. The Supply Chain (Crowsnest Books, 2023) is his first novel.

Elena Sénéchal-Becker (she/her) is a writer and researcher living in Montréal. She runs a workshop for queer writers in Toronto, and is a PhD student at McGill University.

Photo credit: Jonathan Dewdney

Bryan Sentes is the author of Grand Gnostic Central, Ladonian Magnitudes, March End Prill, and most recently the chapbook As on a Holiday. His work has received support from the Canada Council, Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the City of Munich. He is gainfully employed at Dawson College, Montreal.

Paul Sheppard, originally from Rosseau, Ontario, currently lives with his small family of human and non-human animals in London, Ontario, where he works as a neuroscience researcher and moonlights as a poet, musician, and ultramarathon runner. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, The /tƐmz/ Review, Funicular, and others. A selection of his poems recently won the 2025 Read at the Fringe poetry contest at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival.

Allison Snyder is a writer living in northern New Mexico. In 2016, she traded a legal career in Manhattan for running shoes and a used car and set out to live a simpler, less material-driven life. Her work has appeared in The Masters Review, Ninth Letter, and New York Times (Modern Love), among other places. She is currently working on a satirical novel that explores the lasting aftermath when female bodies are commoditized at sport’s highest levels. When she’s not writing, she’s most often in the wild with her dog, Pippi. To learn more about her work, visit www.allisonmsnyder.com or find her on Instagram at allisonmsnyder.

Norie Suzuki (she/her) was born and educated bilingually in Tokyo, Japan, where she writes and works as a simultaneous interpreter. She received an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Cutleaf Journal, The Offing, and elsewhere. She received the third prize in the T. Paulo Urcanse Prize for Literary Excellence in 2024.

Fendy S. Tulodo lives in Malang, Indonesia, and makes art. He uses words and songs to explore how time seems to stretch or shrink for different folks, and how some bonds stay even after they end. He sells motorcycles during daylight. After sunset, he crafts melancholic tunes as Nep Kid and pens tales in various styles. His work exists in that quiet space between what is said and what is truly felt.

Ruby Walker lives in Toronto and writes short stories, plays, and screenplays. Her work has been published in Cold Signal and Pixie Literary Magazine, and received the 2024 Concordia University English Department Award for Fiction.