Kate Finegan
March 2022
Kate Finegan is a fiction writer whose work is supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. She is novel/novella editor for Split/Lip Press. She was winner of PRISM International's 2020 Jacob Zilber Prize for short fiction and was awarded The Fiddlehead’s 2017 fiction prize for a story. She grew up mostly in Tennessee and recently moved from Toronto to Saskatchewan with her spouse and two cats. While at the Wallace Stegner House, Kate will be working on fiction that explores the permeability of the body within its environments. Inspired by place and the complexities of home, she is looking forward to experiencing Eastend in the winter.
Edward Peck
April 2022
Edward Peck studied photography, fine arts, conceptual art, historical technics, film, and literature at the University of British Columbia. Peck works collaboratively with other visual artists, exhibiting locally and internationally. Peck also edited and produced anthologies of Canadian Literature as well as assisted in the editing of a Canadian literary journal. This has led to his editing and production of artist books and exhibition catalogues.
Phyllis Schwartz
April 2022
Phyllis Schwartz, a multi-disciplinary artist and curator, is an Emily Carr University of Art + Design graduate. Phyllis is the recipient of the Canon Photography Award. Her photography has been installed, exhibited and published locally, across Canada and internationally; her works are in corporate, public and private collections. We plan to use photography and writing to respond to the landscape, environment and community to produce a body of visual work and an artist book, while exploring elements of Stegner’s works, specifically Wolf Willow. See also Edward Peck.
Shirley Mackenzie
May 2022
Shirley Mackenzie has a Bachelor’s degree in art and design, with a postgraduate degree in ceramics. She has enjoyed a career in teaching and is now retired. Mackenzie’s art work is intimate and tactile – not large scale. Her sketchpads are full of drawings capturing fleeting expression in portraiture and the ethereal and spiritual aspects in landscape. She is equally absorbed in the intricacies and repetitions of patterns which seem to her an aesthetic management of chaos. Mackenzie likes to capture transition, the in-between. Often she translates these drawings into clay, incorporating fabrics and metals to bring her ideas into the real world.
Karim Alrawi
June 2022
Karim Alrawi is is the recipient of the 2022 Wallace Stegner Grant for the Arts. Karim's plays have been produced in the UK, USA and Canada. He has had productions in London's West End and New York's off-Broadway.
Karen Sunabacka
July 2022
Composer Karen Sunabacka is an Associate Professor of Music at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo. She often finds inspiration from her Métis and mixed European heritage. She has deep roots in the Red River Settlement of Manitoba and feels a strong connection to the Métis, Scottish, Swedish and Finnish cultures. This mix of cultural connections sometimes creates conflicts and new perspectives which she finds both interesting and challenging. Her music reflects this cultural mix through the exploration of the sounds and stories of the Canadian prairies.
Joyce Clouston
July 2022
I am a writer and social worker. My mother was of Metis ancestry whose ancestors of mixed Cree and Orkney/Scots heritage supported Riel. My father’s family were blacksmiths and stonemasons. I have begun to develop writing to encourage healing though art to broad audiences. Joining my daughter in creating opportunities to reach larger audiences brings joy. Karen Sunabacka, my daughter and collaborator in some of the work I plan to complete, will join me part of the residency. My writing focuses on my childhood experience close to land, and Karen draws on her passion for the wilderness through leadership in children’s camping and canoeing, as well as connecting to the lively community of our extended family in the heart of the Metis Nation.
Helen Solmes
September 2022
Helen Solmes is a photographer who is passionate about the prairie landscape, more so now than ever. After retiring in 2014 Solmes chose to leave the prairies she called home for 30 years to return to her native Ontario to be closer to family and to be part of her two grandchildren’s lives. Though Solmes has had many opportunities to photograph Ontario and parts of Utah these past five years, her heart is still on the prairies.
Alison McCreesh
October 2022
Alison McCreesh is a graphic novelist, illustrator and fibre artist as well as the mother of two young children. Originally from Quebec, Alison has lived in Yellowknife since 2009 and, over the past decade, she has extensively travelled around the Arctic and sub Arctic. Contemporary day-to-day life in the north, in all its complexity, is a theme that carries through her creative work.
Jaynie Himsl
November 2022
Jaynie Himsl uses fabric and a domestic sewing machine to make statements about her environment. Design classes over the years along with sewing skills practiced for decades provide a base for her creativity. Working intuitively, she uses a variety of materials to complete her original textile art. While at Wallace Stegner House Himsl plans to explore the area taking photos and observing the colours and light. These observations will be the inspiration for new textile landscapes. Jaynie Himsl is an award winning artist whose work has been exhibited in solo and group shows provincially, nationally and internationally. She resides in Weyburn, Saskatchewan.