Curtain Call

Ari Asho grew up on Vancouver Island and now lives in Montreal. Her stories have been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize twice in 2023 and 2025. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.

 

Odette Auger is a member of Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation. She’s an award-winning journalist learn- ing deep listening, respectful interviewing practices, and centering Indigenous perspectives–leading to finding her own narrative voice. Her first piece of creative nonfiction, “Waiting,” was published by The Malahat Review in Fall 2023. She is currently work- ing on her first novel, developed through a Writer’s Trust mentorship with Joseph Kakwinokanasum.

 

Robyn Braun is a writer based in Edmonton / amisk- waciy-wâskahikan, in Treaty 6 territory. Her writing uses surreal images to speak truth to power. She earned her MFA from UBC’s School of Creative Writing and her novella The Head is out with Enfield and Wizenty press.

 

Noah Cain is a multimodal artist and educator. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications across North America, including CV2, EVENT and Prairie Fire. Find him online at noahjcain.com.

 

Sarah Campbell is a writer in Waterloo where she also works at Words Worth Books. She has been published in The Quarantine Review. Recently she finished her writing certificate at UofT and is currently working on a novel. She lives with her husband, their two children and two dogs.

 

Jennifer Cassidy writes from a small island in the Salish Sea, on the unceded territory of the Straits Salish peoples. Her poetry has appeared in Sea & Cedar and Island Writer. She lives with her partner and children.

 

Linda Clarke is a Guelph-based author and profes- sional performance storyteller. She has been published in The New Quarterly.

 

An Officer of the Order of Canada and a winner of the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, Lorna Crozier’s latest book is After That. She lives on Vancouver Island with a cat, a dog, two turtles, and lots of fish. Though she no longer teaches at the University of Victoria, she offers an online poetry course (check out Wintergreen Studios) and two intense retreats described on her website www.lornacrozier.ca. It is an honour to appear in The New Quarterly.

 

Morgan Dennis has been published fiction previ- ously in The New Quarterly, in the Spring 1997 issue. His work has also appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. He lives in Toronto.

 

Sadiqa de Meijer is the author of Leaving Howe Island, The Outer Wards, and alfabet/alphabet. Her essay collection In The Field will be released in October by Palimpsest Press. She is the current Poet Laureate of Katarokwi/Kingston.

 

David Halliday has published poems across the United States and Canada including murder by Coach House Press, winner of the 2001 Eppie for poetry. Church Street is Burning was a finalist in the 2002 Eppie for poetry. The God of Six Points (Smashwords ebooks), Sleeping Beauty (LTD ebooks.com), The Hole (LTD ebooks). In 2007 he was shortlisted for the CBC Literary Contest in poetry.

 

Kitty Hoffman’s award-winning writing has appeared in literary anthologies and journals including The New Quarterly, Prism International, The Malahat Review, and Grain. She recently won Tablet’s First Personal contest and was named to Lilith’s New Forty. She is seeking representation for a hybrid memoir about her medieval Provencal ancestor, the father of European kabbalah, and transforming the intergenerational trauma of genocide.

 

Andrew Hood’s first collection of stories, Pardon Our Monsters, won the 2007 Danuta Gleed Award. His sec- ond, The Cloaca, won the 2012 Expozine Alternative Press Award. Two stories from that collection were included in that year’s Journey Prize. In 2015, he pub- lished a monograph on the musician Jim Guthrie, Who Needs What. He is a bookseller in Guelph, ON.

 

P.W. Jarungpiterah is working on her first poetry col- lection. Some of her publications include The Malahat Review, Rattle, Queen’s Quarterly, The Antigonish Review and carte blanche.

 

Originally from Saskatchewan, Chantel Lavoie now lives in Kingston, Ontario where she teaches English, Culture, and Communication at the Royal Military College. Her verse has appeared in numerous literary journals, and in her two collections of verse: Where the Terror Lies (Quattro, 2012) and This is about Angels, Women, and Men (Mansfield, 2021). Her first novel, The Boy in the Chimney, will come out in 2027 with Thistledown Press.

 

Amy LeBlanc is a writer and PhD Candidate. She is the author of four books, most recently I used to live here (Porcupine’s Quill). Her work has appeared in CMAJ, Room, Fiddlehead, Canadian Literature, CV2, PRISM, and EVENT among others. Amy lives in Calgary, AB with her asthmatic cat, Oliver.

 

Once upon a time Laurence Lumsden worked in tech but he escaped, under the cover of the pandemic, to tell stories. He was awarded the New Writing Prize at the 2025 Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, Ireland. Born and reared a Dubliner, he’s been a proud Montrealer since 2007. See more of his writing at www.LaurenceWrites.com.

 

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of the poetry collections Observing the Moon (Hagios Press, 2015) and Elementary Particles (Brick Books, 2023), which was a finalist for the Ottawa Book Award and was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. She serves on the editorial board of Canthius magazine and lives with her family in Ottawa.

 

Margaret McCutcheon is a writer, editor and indexer living in Treaty 13 territory in Tkaronto (Toronto). In her earlier career, she was an advocate working for affordable and stable housing. Her current work-in- progress traces the diverging lives of seven women as they grow beyond their shared small-town birthplace. This is her first publication.

 

Devon Rae is a queer writer from Montreal, QC who now lives in Vancouver, BC. Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, PRISM International, Room, Plenitude, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Thirteen Conversations with My Body (Anstruther Press, 2024).

 

Mee-Ju Ro has previously been published in The New Quarterly. Born and raised in Toronto, she recently moved to Chicago, IL where she works as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Chicago.

 

Bernadette Rule’s latest collection of poems is The Window Washer of Chartres (Paradise North Press, 2023). Rule has published two creative nonfiction novels: Dark Fire (2021) & The Arithmetic of Color (2023) (Ironing Board Press/lulu.com). She received the 2017 City of Hamilton Arts Award for Writing. Dark Fire was shortlisted for an IPPY Award & for a Hamilton Literary Award.

 

A Montrealer from early childhood, Robyn Sarah has published ten poetry collections, two story collections, a book of essays on poetry, and most recently a memoir about her early and later years as a serious music stu- dent. In September 2025, Biblioasis will publish We’re Somewhere Else Now, her first new poetry title since My Shoes Are Killing Me won the Governor General’s Award in 2015.

 

Norm Sibum grew up in Germany, Alaska, Missouri, Utah, and Washington State. He has been a Montréaler since 1994. Along with Bruce Serafin, he founded the Vancouver Review and published several collections of poetry in Canada and England with Carcanet Press. His Girls and Handsome Dogs (Porcupine’s Quill, 2002) won the Quebec Writers Federation A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. The Pangborn Defence (Biblioasis, 2008) was shortlisted for the same award.

 

Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. He is the author of two chap- books and his work has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, The Fiddlehead, GEIST, Grain, The Malahat Review, and Riddle Fence. His debut full-length collection,My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet,is forthcoming with Brick Books in 2026.

 

Alister Thomas was a writer, a canoe enthusiast, a TNQ board member and former chair. He was a recent graduate of the King’s College Writing and Publishing Program.

 

Rachel Top is a brand-new graduate from the University of Calgary where she majored in English. She’s usually behind a computer writing, but when she’s not, she enjoys hiking and baking delicious sour- dough bread. You can find her work in the online version of The Banner, The Firework Arts Journal, and on the speakers list for the MacEwan English Conference 2025.

 

Jessica Westhead is the author of the novels Pulpy & Midge (Coach House Books) and Worry (HarperCollins Canada), and the short-story collec- tions And Also Sharks and Things Not to Do (Cormorant Books) and Avalanche (Invisible Publishing). She also works as an editor and a creative writing teacher, and lives in Toronto with her family.

 

Lynda Williams (she/her) is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. Her work has appeared in Grain, The Humber Literary Review, and on Reedsy, among others. Her debut collection of stories is forth- coming from Guernica in 2025.

 

Sara Wilson is a graduate of Vancouver Island University, with a BA majoring in Creative Writing. Her poetry has appeared in various publications such as Dinosaur Porn, The Dalhousie Review, CV2, Nod, Qwerty, Ottawa Arts Review, and Event. She is a Red Seal Sheet Metal Journeyman, a terrible birdwatcher, and an occasional guitar tuner.