Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. Her poetry has won the Gustafson Prize, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, and the Great Blue Heron Prize, while her second book, Ledi, was a finalist for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award. Her most recent book is A blueprint for survival (Guernica Editions, 2024); a book of ecopoetics, Blue thinks itself within me: Lyric poetry, ecology, and lichenous form will appear with Oskana Poetry and Poetics (University of Regina Press) in February 2026. Her poetry films have screened internationally in cities such as Dublin, Athens, and Seattle. “walk quietly / ts’ekw’unshun kws qututhun,” a guided walk at Hwlhits’um (Canoe Pass) in Delta, BC, featuring contributions from artists, scientists, and Hwlitsum and Cowichan knowledge holders can be accessed online at https://walkquietly.ca. She lives in Vancouver, ancestral, unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ Nations. www.kimtrainor.ca
Renée M. Sgroi (she/her) is a writer, educator, and full-time caregiver. Her most recent poetry collection, In a Tension of Leaves and Binding (Guernica Editions), was on the CBC’s 2024 highly anticipated fall poetry books and was recently shortlisted for an International Rubery Award. A member of a number of organizations including The Writers’ Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets, Renée is grateful to live and work on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations, and the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nations.
sophie anne edwards (she/her/settler) works on and off the page, at her desk, and in the bush. Her debut collection of visual and text-based poetry, Conversations with the Kagawong River (Talonbooks) was recommended by CBC as an October ‘must read’, and made both CBC’s and Quill & Quire’s most anticipated fall release lists. She was longlisted for the 2021 CBC poetry prize, shortlisted for Arc Poetry Magazine’s 2019 Poem of the Year, and long-listed for Omnidawn’s 2024 1st/2nd Book prize. Her experimental novel, A Mouth of Vowels, is now available through 1366, an imprint of Guernica Editions. She lives on Mnidoo Mnising/Manitoulin Island. www.sophieanneedwards.ca
