Cameron Anstee lives in Ottawa, ON, where he runs Apt. 9 Press. He won the 2008 Lilian I. Found Award (Carleton University) and the Inaugural Origami Crane Contest (TREE Reading Series). Recent poems can be found in SugarMule, ottawater, and Peter F. Yacht Club.

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and performer. His music and writing have been published and presented in Canada, the US, and overseas. He received a PhD in Music Composition and was the recipient of the KM Hunter Foundation Artist Award for his writing. Seeing Stars, a YA novel, was a finalist for both Canadian Library Association YA book of the year, and an Arthur Ellis Award. His poetry includes Outside the Hat and Raising Eyebrows (both Coach House) and, with derek beaulieu, frogments from the frag pool (Mercury). His fiction includes Doctor Weep and Other Strange Teeth and Big Red Baby. The Briefcase Hand, a new poetry collection, is forthcoming from Coach House. His latest chapbooks are Inverting the Deer and Punctuation Funnies (serif of nottingham). He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and teaches music at Hillfield Strathallan College. He can be found at garybarwin.com and serifofnottingham.blogspot.com.

Gregory Betts is the author of If Language (2005), Haikube (2006), and the forthcoming The Others Raisd in Me (Fall 2009). He curates the Grey Borders Reading Series and co-edits PRECIPICe literary magazine. He lives in St. Catharines where he teaches Canadian and Avant-Garde literature.

David Brock is a playwright with a zoology degree. Recent work has appeared in Event, Eye Weekly, Poetry is Dead, and Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine. He is currently designing a Spring/Summer line of fashion poetry for a literary collaboration with Vancouver-writer Sean Horlor, libretti for two new operas, and a collection of Saved by the Bell essays.

Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s poetry and fiction have been widely published in Canadian journals; she was also the recipient of the 2007 Lina Chartrand Award for Poetry. Current projects include two separate manuscripts and a poem-film collaboration. Elisabeth lives in Toronto with two children and one dog.

Nashira Dernesch was raised in St. Jacobs, Ontario, and studied at the University of Toronto before being accepted into York University’s Creative Writing program. She was co-editor of the literary journal existere for three years. In 2006 she won the Art Bar Series’ Annual Discovery Night. Her first published work, It’s No Secret You’ll Feel Better, sold out within the first two days of publication and is now in its second printing.

Anya Douglas was born Anya Moussienko. Originally from Riga, Latvia, she immigrated to Toronto in 1996 with her family. Anya has two degrees from York University and is a freelance language teacher. She is also a musician and the lead singer in the band, Personal Circus. Anya writes poetry and fiction in both English and Russian. She has also worked on a translation project with Richard Teleky, translating six major 20th century Russian poets. She currently lives on Queen West, calls Toronto home, and is constantly trying to quit smoking.

Andrew Faulkner is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. He is a co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Ottawa Arts Review and is also on the selection committee for Bywords. His poetry has appeared both in print and online in Ygdrasil, Bywords Quarterly Journal, Making Tracks: A University of Ottawa Anthology, The Onion Union and most recently, dANDelion, Misunderstandings Magazine, Ottawater and dig. He is the co-author of Basement Tapes, a chapbook of poetry and homo-linguistic translations, with Marcus McCann and Nicholas Lea. He is a co-founder of The Emergency Response Unit.

Julie Cameron Gray has published poems in Carousel, Lichen, The Windsor Review, Queens Quarterly, The Amethyst Review and a chapbook with Cactus Press (2006), entitled The Distance Between Two Bodies. Her fist full-length book of poetry will be released by Tightrope Books in Spring 2013. She is a contributing editor for Misunderstandings Magazine, and is originally from Sudbury, Ontario.

Nicholas Lea‘s first full-length collection of poems Everything is Movies (Chaudière Books, Ottawa) was released to acclaim in 2007. He lives and works in Ottawa where he continues to chip away at a second collection of poems.

Marcus McCann was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award (2008) and won both the Rubicon Press Midwinter Chapbook contest (2008) and the University of Ottawa 48-Hour Novella Writing contest (2006). His chapbooks include The tech/tonic suite (Rubicon Press, Edmonton, Fall 2008), petty illness leaflet (Onion Union, Ottawa, 2008), Heteroskeptical (above/ground, Ottawa, 2007) and So Long, Derrida (UESA, Ottawa, 2006). He is the editor of Capital Xtra, Ottawa’s gay and lesbian newspaper.

Jacob McArthur Mooney lives in Parkdale. His trade books are The New Layman’s Almanac (M&S, 2008) and the eventual Folk (M&S, 2011-or-so). He knows Leigh and Andrew and David and Elizabeth. He sort of knows Aaron. He does not know Cameron but has been told he’s approachable, so will eventually say hi.

Leigh Nash is an editorial assistant with Mansfield Press, an editor with Re:word Communications, an executive member of the Scream Literary Festival, and a reader for Bywords, an Ottawa-based literary journal. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and her work has appeared in Carousel, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, existere, This Magazine and Ottawa Arts Review. She is a co-founder of The Emergency Response Unit.

Matthew Tierney is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently The Hayflick Limit (Coach House Books), which was shortlisted for a Trillium Book Award. His next book, titled Probably Inevitable, considers the science and philosophy of time. It will come out fall 2012. He lives in Toronto.

Aaron Tucker’s work has appeared in literary journals across Canada including Rampike and Descant. He is currently an exectuive member of the Scream Literary Festival and regular book reviewer at www.agorareview.ca, a website he also edits. He is currently living and teaching in Toronto.