Christopher arrives at Art Song from the world of theatre. As producer or stage manager of other people's words, he worked on 40+ productions in a variety of venues including parks, a bed-and-breakfast, a former coffin factory, and on a literal island. As a writer, his short works and adaptations have been performed in academic and festival settings. A Torontonian by birth and a graduate of York University, he currently lives in Winnipeg.
Max Maclean (he/him) is a musician and poet living in Vancouver, BC. Currently studying poetry at UBC, his work was recently published for the first time in CV2. Exploring themes of disability, hope, and the many distances of life, he’s written a poem every day for over 6 years running, working tirelessly to better understand himself and the world.
Kevin McNeilly is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and the UBC site co-ordinator for the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. A book of poems, Embouchure, is published by Nightwood Editions (2011). Two audio chapbooks have appeared: Ammons: A Sheaf of Words for Piano (2015) and Pining, for broken solo voice (2020). He has published poetry in Canadian Literature, Ariel, Descant, Event, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. Audio, video and more can be found at kevinmcneilly.ca and kevinmcneilly.com, or on his Bandcamp page, kevinmcneilly.bandcamp.com.
Marlo Browne is an award-winning Barbadian multi-hyphenate artist who has published 5 poetry books and currently lives in Langley. Marlo has performed and featured at many events and has converted some of his poetry into short films. To date, he has released three short films- ‘I'm Sorry’ in 2023 and ‘Dear Single Mom’ and ‘Invisible’ in 2025. The first film ‘I'm Sorry’ was the runner up in the Short Film category of the Langley City Film festival in 2023. The second short film, ‘Dear Single Mom’ won a Bronze Award at the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts in Barbados in 2025.
His fourth and fifth poetry collections, entitled ‘The Life and Times of a Poet’ and ‘Journal of a Black Man’, both earned Gold Book Awards from Literary Titan in May and September 2025 respectively.
Mateo Quispe is a poet, writer, and actor from Auburn, Washington, where he serves as the 2024-2026 Auburn Poet Laureate. A librettist in the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, he partnered with composer Mina Pariseau to create Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun, a twenty minute chamber opera. He has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Collections of Transience, EchoX, The Fine Arts Work Center, The Future Perfect Project, Jack Straw, and UrbanWordNYC. He is also the recipient of the 2024 Dwone Anderson Young Youth Leadership Award for QT-BIPOC youth activists and the former Youth Poet Laureate of Seattle.
Regina poet Gerry Hill, Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan in 2016, published his seventh collection, Crooked at the Far End, with Radiant Press during the pandemic. In total he has published seven books with five Canadian presses, and dozens of poems in literary magazines and anthologies. He has participated in readings, workshops, retreats and conferences across Canada and internationally. As independent musical theatre producer, Gerry adapted Charlotte’s Web for staging at TicTocTen Short Performance Festival in Regina in 2022 and, in 2023, produced Oak Floors!, book and lyrics by Gerry Hill, for a short run live in Regina and online.
Natasha is a writer and multimedia artist, working across different media, combining digital and analog media. Her poetry has been published in different journals, anthologies and special collections. Her textile and fibre art, poetry weaving, has been exhibited in Canada and Internationally. Her video poetry has been awarded and screencast across the globe. She lives and works in Vancouver, where she often reads her poetry at literary events.
Tamara Gorin (she/they) is a poet, editor, and essayist. A graduate of SFU Writer’s Studio 2006/2007 poetry cohort and a member of the Federation of BC Writers, she owns Western Sky Books, an independent bookstore and art gallery in Port Coquitlam / kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, BC, with her wife. You may or may not want to ask about her favourite limerances: birds, trees, water, bears, pollinators, resisting AI, and decolonization praxis— that depends on how much time you have.
Holly Flauto (she/they) lives and writes on the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations. Holly's debut poetry-memoir collection exploring immigration to Canada during an era of reconciliation, Permission to Settle (Anvil Press), was named one of the top poetry books of 2024 by CBC Books. Her fiction and creative memoir has previously been published in The Ex-Puritan, Joyland, and The Rusty Toque. Holly teaches creative and academic writing at Capilano University.
Mado Christie is a pianist and writer living in St. John's, Newfoundland. Originally from Toronto, Mado completed their Bachelor's in Piano Performance at the University of Toronto and their Masters in Vocal Accompanying at the Manhattan School of Music. They currently co-teach the Opera Workshop at Memorial University’s School of Music, on top of collaborating with students, colleagues, and other arts organizations around St. John’s and beyond. Their writing appears in Riddle Fence and Acta Victoriana, and they were a founding editor of Augur Magazine.
Winston Lê is a Vietnamese diaspora poet, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural worker who resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples. His writing has been featured in, filling Station, ROOted Rhythms, Composed: anthology of poetry 2024, Poetry Pause, periodicities, Sparkling Tongue Press, Ekphrasis Magazine, and pagefiftyone. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks, translanguaging, hybrid utterance, Thhhhh, Tôiblazon. His debut chapbook, translanguaging was shortlisted for the 2018 Broken Pencil Zine Awards. Winston also has worked on various interdisciplinary collaborations with other artists, including multi-instrumentalist composer, Cameron Catalano, botanical artist, Katrina Vera Wong, and choreographer, Rob Kitsos. In April 2025, Lê was the poet-in-residence at Greywood Arts, an artist residency located in Cork, Ireland.
K.I. Press's four books of poetry are Exquisite Monsters (Turnstone), Types of Canadian Women (Gaspereau), Spine (Gaspereau), and Pale Red Footprints (Pedlar). She is originally from Treaty 8 lands in northern Alberta and now lives in St. Vital in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory and National Homeland of the Red River Métis. Karen has an MA in English Literature from the University of Ottawa and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She teaches writing at Red River College Polytechnic at its Exchange District Campus in Winnipeg.
For more info: kipress.ca
Kayt (Lackie) Burgess (they/she) is a writer, educator, musician, and researcher in multimodal storytelling. Their novel Heidegger Stairwell won the infamous 3 Day Novel Contest and was shortlisted for the ReLit Award for Fiction. Motel Pictures's feature film adaptation We Forgot to Break Up premiered at the 2024 London BFI Flare festival. Kayt’s second novel Connection at Newcombe was published in 2021 by Latitude 46 Publishing. They create short fiction, poetry, drama, and popular song forms, as well as community story arts projects and experimental post-digital immersive experiences. This includes writing for the hit augmented reality game, Zombies, Run!
Kayt is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the National Association of Teachers of Singing. They hold degrees from Western University and the University of Auckland, among others, as well as a PhD in digital creative writing (multimodal storytelling) from Bath Spa University.
In addition to writing, Kayt runs a private music studio in Elliot Lake, Ontario (Robinson-Huron Treaty 61 territory).
For more information: Kayt.ca
Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD is dancer, poet/writer and award-winning educator who is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Celeste has written extensively and her books include, Embodied inquiry: Writing living and being through the body, three collections of poetry and her most recent book is Dance, poetics and place: Site-specific performance as a portal to knowing. Her last book of poetry, The marrow of longing explores her Armenian identity. Celeste creates site-specific performances in the natural world, including botanical gardens and sites between land and sea. Celeste lives outside Vancouver, B.C., Canada and is a mother of three amazing adult sons. She can be found at www.celestesnowber.com.
Sarah Mercer - I am a Winnipeg poet originally from the Greater Toronto Area. As a transcultural adoptee, I have struggled with my identity. Being a parent of a child with disabilities widens my perspective. My dabbling in poetry, music composition and singing has intensified recently.
Jess Woolford is a writer, literary critic and editor whose poetry has been published in the museum of americana, Book of Matches, Text Power Telling Magazine, The Ecological Citizen, Prairie Fire Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Winnipeg Free Press and elsewhere. Her poetry has also been exhibited in #BeHereWinnipeg, a garden of poetry in ice, and in the Poetry Society of Vermont’s Corporeal Poetry: Poetry in Art and Objects show. Raised in Vermont, Woolford now lives and writes on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
JCCortens, poet & educator lives, writes & teaches on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations (Vancouver, BC). JCCortens is driven by a passion for the written word, & a belief that the strengthening of personal voice & the articulation of our unique & commonly held histories serves the world as a model of hope, healing & inspiration.
His poems have appeared in several journals including The Holy Male, The Maynard, Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets) and as well as Art & Poetry Anthology, an almost hand beckoning (with J. Swanson). His poem There is in me was selected for an honourable mention for the Delta Literary Arts Society spring contest (2024) Write On!
As a poet, he seeks to respond to the world from a place of compassion and curiosity. Current obsessions include a series entitled Every Scar is a Story; Mapping the gaymale body a topography of the lives of gay men in fragmented times. Chapbook manuscripts (yet to be published) include Eros & Thanatos: Poems of Love and Death (2024) and The Imaginary Lover (2019).
for more info: https://jccortens.ca