BIO

BIO

BIO

Originally from Taipei, Taiwan, Maria Wang is a versatile cellist and music educator based in Victoria, BC. She holds a BMus from West Virginia University and an MMus in cello performance with Prof. Pamela Highbaugh Aloni at the University of Victoria. Maria teaches at the Victoria Conservatory of Music as a cello instructor, ensemble coach, and orchestra director. She also performs actively and is the founding cellist of the Breakwater Quartet, known for its contemporary song arrangements.

Yvonne Blomer’s sixth book is Death of Persephone: A Murder, a mystery in poems based on the Persephone myth. Previous books include The Last Show on Earth, which explores grief, love and climate change. She is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer and lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people.

John Barton’s collections and chapbooks of poetry include Hymn, For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin, Polari, and Lost Family (2021 Derek Walcott Prize nominee). His other books include We Are Not Avatars: Essays, Memoirs, Manifestos and The Essential Douglas LePan (2020 eLit Award winner). A past editor of The Malahat Review, he was Victoria’s fifth poet laureate.

Steven Ross Smith, Banff Poet Laureate, 2018-21, loves music and has published the multi-book poetic series fluttertongue; Books 1-7. His fourteenth book is Glimmer: Short Fictions, (Radiant Press, 2022.) Recent is The Green Rose, a collaboration with Phil Hall (above/ground press). Smith now lives and writes in Victoria, BC. 

Award-winning poet, Cynthia Woodman Kerkham hasn’t found a body of water she doesn’t like. Along with “Water Quality”, she is the author of “Good Holding Ground” and “with feathers.” She also teaches and edits and was co-editor of the anthology “Poems from Planet Earth”—the planet, and reading series, for which she is eternally grateful. 

Andrea Scott is a mother, writer and high school teacher living in Victoria, B.C., the traditional territory of the Lekwungen peoples. She has been shortlisted and longlisted for a variety of literary contests, and recently won the 2022 Geist Erasure Poetry contest and the 2024 Raven Chapbooks Poetry Contest.

Rhona McAdam has published 11 books; her latest poetry collection, Larder, reflects her love of food. She has an MA in food culture & communication from Slow Food’s university in Italy, and works for the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition in Victoria.

Born in Vancouver, Ian Thomas is a biologist and poet with a lifelong passion for the ecosystems and wildlife of the BC coast. Green Islands is his first published book, and won the Raven Chapbook's Contest.

Anne Hopkinson writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from her home in Victoria. She is a retired teacher, nature lover, and water rat. Her work appears in anthologies: Walk Myself Home by Caitlin Press, V6A, Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Arsenal Pulp Press), and Poet to Poet by Guernica Press. Most recently Refugium, by Caitlin Press. She won the Victoria Writer’s Society Creative Non-/fiction Contest in 2018, and The Canadian Stories Poetry Prize for 2019. Her work was short-listed for the BC Federation of Writers Poetry Prize in 2019, and in the FBCW BC and Yukon short fiction prize in 2020.

Barbara Pelman is a retired high school English teacher, and poet. She conducts poetry workshops in her home—when possible, and is a frequent participant and assistant at Planet Earth Poetry’s Friday night venue. She has three published books of poetry: One Stone (Ekstasis Editions 2005), Borrowed Rooms (Ronsdale Press, 2008), and Narrow Bridge (Ronsdale Press 2017), and four chapbooks. In 2018 her glosa, “Nevertheless” won the Malahat Open Season Poetry Contest. Previously another glosa “After Winter” won the Literary Writes contest in 2005. Her poems can be found in anthologies as well as in various literary journals.