Bettina Matzkuhn
Bettina Matzkuhn learned to embroider as a child. She uses thread and fabric to explore stories about nature, geography and memory. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts and an MA in Liberal Studies from Simon Fraser University. Her work is exhibited across Canada and internationally, and held in public and private collections. She writes professionally on the arts, lectures, teaches and volunteers.
Matthew Hughes
Matthew (Matt) Hughes writes fantasy, space opera, and crime fiction. He has sold 23 novels to publishers large and small in the UK, US, and Canada, as well as 90 works of short fiction to professional markets. He has won the Endeavour and Arthur Ellis Awards, and has been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, Neffy, and Derringer Awards. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s Hall of Fame.
andrea bennett
andrea bennett is a National Magazine Award–winning writer and editor and the author of two travel guides, one book of poetry, and, most recently, the essay collection Like a Boy but Not a Boy: Navigating Life, Mental Health, and Parenthood Outside the Gender Binary (Arsenal Pulp Press), a CBC Books’ pick for the top Canadian nonfiction of the year, and one of Autostraddle’s best queer books of 2020.
Norma Barsness
Artist Norma Barsness is a landscape contemporary painter with a unique vision. Norma resides in Calgary and paints scenes familiar to her. She works to induce emotion and attain a particular aesthetic, rather than portray a specific place. Viewers are drawn in by her brilliant colors and bold brushstrokes that define her signature style. Norma’s work has been exhibited widely in many Alberta shows and galleries.
Danica Klewchuk
April 2021
Danica Klewchuk is based in Edmonton, Alberta. In 2020, she was a mentee of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Mentorship program. Her work has appeared in Event and The Gateway Review, and is forthcoming in Crazyhorse.
Jeff Wilson
Jeff Wilson grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. Jeff produces painting collections that exhibit in public galleries in BC, Alberta and WA State. Jeff has received a number of awards. Jeff has completed residencies at the Booth in Shetland, Parks Canada’s Art in the Park and the Wallace Stegner House. Jeff Wilson lives and works in Vancouver.
Diana Chabros
In 2012, Diana Chabros relocated from Regina to Val Marie, a village in deep southwest Saskatchewan at the cusp of Grasslands National Park. Moved by the power of the land - its subtle energy, palette, geology, and sentience as a biological living entity - Diana documents, through paint, her dialogue with the area’s rich mix of cultures, stories, and sentient beings. An adjunct to her own professional art practice, Diana serves as a consultant/manager for her busy life partner, a senior interdisciplinary artist and nêhiyaw/Cree knowledge keeper, Joseph Naytowhow from Treaty Six. She also delivers Nature in Me© Intuitive Painting Retreats, cares for many Val Marie cats, and and operates a small bed & breakfast.
Barbara Meneley
February/March 2021
Barbara Meneley is a prairie-based intermedia artist. Her art practice operates through performance, media, cartography, writing, installation, and dialogic engagement. Through these forms, she engages with the landscapes and foundations of contemporary society and culture to develop site-responsive projects that investigate Canadian national imaginaries and her own position as a contemporary settler/settler descendent/treaty person on this land.
Tara Dawn Solheim
January 2021
Tara Dawn Solheim works across genres, her original creations integrate poetry and melody in performance. Tara Dawn spent a year in the UK and later five years in Japan where she performed extensively and wrote for a number of music groups. Her experiences have led her to explore the physicality of the voice. She is currently working on a new collection of performance poetry pieces.