Contributors
George Bowering
George Bowering is a poet, writer, biographer, and historian. He has written over ninety works and was the first Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada. He has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and Poetry. In 1993, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 2004 received the Order of British Columbia. Having lived all across Canada, including Montreal, Calgary, and London, Ontario, he is currently living the good life and is retired in Vancouver, BC.
Jon Paul Fiorentino
Jon Paul Fiorentino’s first novel Stripmalling was shortlisted for the 2009 Hugh MacLennan Award for Fiction. He is the author of the poetry books Indexical Elegies and The Theory of the Loser Class, which was shortlisted for the 2006 A.M. Klein Award. His next book is called Needs Improvement and will be out with Coach House Books in 2013.
___
Darren Bifford
Darren Bifford is originally from Summerland, BC. His work has been published in a variety of journals across Canada. He’s also the author ofWolf Hunter, a chapbook published by Cactus Press (2010). Wedding in Fire Country is his first collection of poetry. Darren currently lives in Montreal, Quebec.
______
_______
Marty Sartini Garner
Marty Sartini Garner is the author of numerous headaches, personal crises, and record reviews. His work has appeared in Grantland, Joyland, and the website of enRoute magazine, and his music writing appears regularly in FILTER and Aquarium Drunkard. He lives in New Orleans. He lives in New Orleans and can be found on his Tumblr, website, and Twitter.
__
Christen Thomas
Christen Thomas is the Managing Editor of Firefly Books. Her poetry is published in The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, QWERTY, The Toronto Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Room of One’s Own, and many others. She is a cyclist, gym rat, and roller skater, and played with Toronto Roller Derby’s D-VAS as Metaphorce.
_________
_________
Soren Stockman
Soren Stockman was raised in Boston. He has been fortunate to study with some incredible teachers of poetry, and he is indebted to them, and was awarded a full scholarship to the New York State Summer Writers Institute, a residency in the Spring of 2012 at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, and worked with cultural and in literary initiatives in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Montreal, Quebec. He lives in New York. Celtics Forever.
__
Dave Jaffer
Dave Jaffer has written for Hour Magazine, the Ottawa XPress, Spinner, Noisecreep, FFWD, Citeeze Montréal, Toronto Standard, and the Huffington Post. He lives in Toronto and most days he bides his time in the nebulous world of digital/social communications, wherein he imagines, creates, implements, and manages projects. (The subtext of the last sentence is: “He gets paid to play with computers, which he relates to better than humans.”)
______
_____
Melissa Bull
Melissa Bull is a writer, editor, and translator. She lives in Montreal.
___
____
____
Henry Gass
Henry Gass is a recent McGill University graduate and freelance journalist based in Montreal. His work has appeared in the McGill Daily, Forget The Box, OpenFile Montreal, and the Montreal Mirror. You can follow him on Twitter @henrygass.
Jeff Gandell
Jeff Gandell is a Montreal writer, comic, storyteller, and teacher. More of his essays can be found at Testifiles.com.
Nicolas Quiazua
Nicolas Quiazua is the editor-in-chief of McGill’s French university newspaper, Le Délit. Freelance photo and video-journalist, his body is more of an extension to his camera; the shutter release. He resides in Montreal and his visual work can be found on his Flickr and YouTube accounts.
Nicolas provide the original photography for Henry Gass’s column, “Femme Fatale: Wrestling as Art”.
Spencer Gordon
Spencer Gordon’s first book of fiction, Cosmo, is forthcoming from Coach House Books. His writing has been published in Joyland, Event, The Windsor Review, and others. He’s a co-editor/founder of the online magazine The Puritan and the micro-press Ferno House, which dropped his poetry chapbook Feel Good! Look Great! Have a Blast! in fall 2011. He teaches at Humber and OCAD. He blogs here and tweets @spencergordon. He is ex-WWE champion.
__________________
Julie Mannell
Julie Mannell is a Fonthill, Ontario born, Montreal-based poetry and prose writer. She is President of the McGill Creative Writing Society and has published several pieces in various Canadian publications. She is currently living in Vilnius, Lithuania where she has received a fellowship from Summer Literary Seminars. Julie is also the first female to be published in The Barnstormer.
___________________
______________________
Alex Wong
Alex is originally from Hong Kong, came to Toronto when he was in Grade 3 because his dad promised him that Dragon Ball Z was popular in Canada as well. When his dad was filling out his elementary school application form, he asked him to choose an English name. At the time, he was playing Alex Kidd in Miracle World and so a name was born. He blogs about sports here and tweets @steven_lebron, obviously still trying to run away from his chosen name.
______
__
Annik Adey-Babinski
Annik Adey-Babinski grew up in Ottawa. She participated in the Banff Center’s 2011 Wired Writing Studio and is headed to Miami in August of 2012 to work on a poetry MFA at Florida International University. You can find her poems online in The Moose and Pussy, Burner Magazine and Poets and the News. Follow her tweets @poetsandthenews.
___
Marcus P. Andrews
Marcus P. Andrews Jr. lives in Canada. A business owner, he writes poetry (occasionally while on long bike rides) to be closer to the ones he loves.
_______
_______
_____
Binoy Zuzarte
Binoy Zuzarte lives in the Toronto area. His most recent writing can be found in The Hart House Review and Steps Magazine. He tweets about poetry and his misadventures here.
________
________
_________________
Jeff Blackman
Jeff Blackman is a poet and research analyst. His most recent mini-chapbook, Back to My Old Self, was published with Odourless Press last year. Poems of his have also appeared recently in Burner, Nod and Soliloquies. He contributed to data analysis on the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care’s five-year review of Community Treatment Orders – Google it!
_______
__________________
Nathaniel G. Moore
Nathaniel G. Moore is the author of the novel Wrong Bar and Let’s Pretend We Never Met. He lives in Toronto. He has attended both Wrestlemanias in Toronto and met Mick Foley, Kevin Nash and Bret Hart. In November 2011, to honour the life of Randy Savage, he curated an art show in Toronto. His next editorial project is Hart Strings, a biography of Julie Hart, the ex-wife of Bret “The Hitman” Hart which Nathaniel is editing for his new imprint with Tightrope Books, The Highwire.
___
André Narbonne
André Narbonne spent ten years as a cadet and marine engineer on bulk carriers, tankers, fishery patrol and hydrographic vessels before working nightshift as a stationary engineer in a waste oil refinery to pay for his studies at Dalhousie University. He also tested capelin for a Newfoundland fish plant. He holds a PhD from the University of Western Ontario. His favourite band is the Kinks. He lives in Ottawa with Aeriana, Schrödinger, Helena, and Cordelia, two of whom are cats.
________
JB Staniforth
JB Staniforth is a writer, reporter, and editor who lives and works in Montreal. His first book, The Deadly Snakes: Real Rock and Roll Tonight, will be published by Invisible Publishing in November of 2012. As well, he is a regular contributor to the Nation magazine, serving the communities of the James Bay Cree (Eeyou Istchee). His half-marathon PR is 2:23—for now.
David Brock
David Brock is a playwright, poet, librettist and occasional sport blogger. His plays and operas have been produced in Canada, the US, and Europe. He has written two chapbooks of poetry: Gasmask Summer (Emergency Response Unit, 2009) and Black Metal Melody (Ferno House, 2011). You can find him here on Twitter.
______
Kevin Bray
Kevin Bray is a Toronto writer and teacher, who studied with Timothy Findley at the Humber School for Writers. His essays are often found in the Globe and Mail and he has published in Airplane Reading and The Healing Muse (forthcoming this October). He blogs at insidethereadingbox.com.
Laura Saba
Laura Saba is a Montreal blogger who writes about sports, life, and her adventures on the internet at The Active Stick. She used to be a student journalist and wrote fiction and poetry on the side but now spends most of her time incoherently ranting about sports. She is also working on a collection of short stories that are dying to see the light of day (when she’s not busy being a terrible person on Twitter).
E Martin Nolan
E Martin Nolan lives in Toronto and writes poetry and essays. He covers hockey for hockeyinsociety.com, is a poetry editor at The Puritan Magazine, and has had poems in CV2, The Toronto Quarterly and The Puritan. For more, including links to writing, visit emartinnolan.wordpress.com. You may know him as Ted.
Nic Boshart
Nic Boshart. Nic works at The Walrus and Invisible Publishing and writes nothing except website blurbs and press releases. He enjoys sports and runs sometimes. He also goes on computers a lot.
Sean Cranbury
Sean Cranbury is a writer by day and bartender by night. He grew up playing baseball in the summers and hockey in the winters. He collects vinyl records and has an opinion or two on book and the internet. Sean lives in east Vancouver and online at seancranbury.com
Ann Ward is a writer, editor, conference organizer, and breakfast sandwich enthusiast. She lives in Montreal, but flies away often when duty calls. You can find her most recent writing in Dragnet and Contemporary Verse 2, and you follow her on Twitter, if you like.
Jeff Dupuis writes poetry and short fiction, and reviews non-fiction and how-to books. His work has been published in Bare Hands Poetry Journal, The Rolling Thunder Quarterly, Eclectic Eel, the Acta Victoriana, blogTO and Valve. In his off-hours Jeff likes to train in the martial arts, or if nothing else, watch straight-to-DVD martial arts movies. Jeff Dupuis lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
Dave Kaufman is the host of The Kaufman Show on TSN radio in Montreal. Listen live on Monday evenings, or check out the podcast on iTunes or at TheKaufmanShow.podbean.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheKaufmanShow.
Tyler Munro is a Toronto-based writer who can’t decide whether he likes music or basketball more, so he’s decided to make it his mission to write sarcastically about both. His Twitter account is missing an “e” because some jerk with a great name grabbed the full handle first, but you can still follow along at @tylrmunro.
Natalie Zina Walschots
Natalie Zina Walschots is the author of DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains (Insomniac Press, 2012) and Thumbscrews (Snare Books, 2007). Here varied resume is both humbling and inspiring, but too long for this space, so let’s just say Natalie writes poetry about S&M, gastroporn, comic books, video games, feminism and difficult music. She’s also the Wordsmith and Promotions Wizard behind Golden Spruce Entertainment, and lives “in a beach cave with three psycho jungle cats and a Bearshark”. Follow her on Twitter, and visit her at nataliezed.ca.
___
David McGimpsey
David McGimpsey was born and raised in Montreal. He is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry, including Lardcake and Sitcom which was a finalist for both the A.M. Klein Prize and the ReLit Award. David is also the author of the award-winning study Imagining Baseball: America’s Pastime and Popular Culture, and writes a regular humour column for Montreal’s Matrix magazine and the “Sandwich of the Month” column as a contributing editor for EnRoute. David lives in the Mile-End district of Montreal and teaches creative writing and literature at Concordia University. His most recent work, Li’L Bastard was named a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Follow Dave on Twitter or Tumblr.
Julie Hart
Julie Hart is a proud mother of four and a grandmother. She is of First Nations blood, a proud Metis. Her family’s band is from Saskatchewan – ‘Carry the Kettle Nation.’ The ultimate goal in Julie’s life is to work with First Nations children. She has worked for innumerable charities including being a Stroke Group Facilitator at the Calgary Foothills Hospital, a speaker for brain injury awareness, fundraising for the Winnipeg Children’s Hospital, overseas co-ordinator and operations specialist for The Love of Children’s Society of Alberta, and in 2006 worked in Israel to raise funds for homeless charities. For more information go to www.fortheloveofchildrensociety.org) or juliehart.org.
Eric Fershtman
Eric Fershtman is a writer and editor whose fiction and essays have been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency,Construction Lit, and Squawk Back. He’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and won the Summer Literary Seminars Emerging Writers Award in 2012. He lives in Orlando, FL, at the moment.
Avi Goldberg
Avi Goldberg is a sociologist who teaches full time at Vanier College and part time at Concordia University in Montreal. His early areas of specialization were in political sociology and social movements but he has more recently shifted his focus to the only slightly less intense concerns of culture, sports, and digital communities. Avi is also a Featured Contributor for the online hockey magazine AllHabs.net. There, he applies his sociological imagination to popular writing about hockey and sports. Avi is a partner to Lori and a father to Ruby. You can follow Avi on Twitter @AviGoldberg.
Stacey May Fowles
Stacey May Fowles is a writer and magazine professional living in Toronto. She has published two novels, has anthologized some essays, is a regular contributor to The National Post, and currently works at The Walrus. Her third novel is forthcoming with ECW Press in 2013.
Christian Charette
Christian Charette teaches English at the endangered species known as an English College, in some remote part of Quebec where there are more cows than people, and nary a Starbucks in view. A lapsed writer, he has nonetheless managed to publish some fiction and reviews in Matrix and Pilot, as well as the Sherbrooke Record. All he really knows about sports is that pro hockey used to be a whole lot more fun to watch. It fact, you used to even be able to watch it. He lives in Sherbrooke, QC, and still thinks #16 was the best Left Winger ever.
____
Pat Suley
Patrick Suley is a baseball analyst, writer, libertarian, and dating coach. He is the co-host of the “Call to the Bullpen” MLB Podcast and writes about baseball and fantasy football for Midwest Sports Fans.
Jake Goldsbie
Jake Goldsbie was born and raised in Toronto. After spending four years in Montreal learning how to drink better (and being in school or something), Jake returned to Toronto to find work in a province that would hire him. He has written and worked for the now-defunct AV Club Toronto and has worked for theScore.com since March. Jake wrote the weekly piece “Getting Quoted” for the baseball blog Getting Blanked and is a regular contributor to Backhand Shelf and can be heard every week on the Backhand Shelf podcast. Jake lives in the West Queen West area of Toronto and can generally be found eating pizza. You can follow him on Twitter.
Arjun Basu
Arjun Basu writes stuff on Twitter. His first novel will be published in spring 2014. He knows how to throw a knuckleball. Badly.
Lizy Mostowski
Lizy Mostowski studies Creative Writing and English Literature at Concordia University in Montreal, where she is Editor-in-Chief of Soliloquies Anthology. Last year, she was longlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Ribbon Pig, Headlight Anthology, Dragnet Magazine, and The Literarian (forthcoming).
Lynette Wilson
Lynette Wilson studies English Literature at Carleton University, and writes poetry and prose about the things in her life that make it ‘worth living.’ That said, a large portion of her scribblings are also found in the form of song lyrics. Lynette has always said that when she “grows up” she wants to be either a “writer or a rock star.”
Trevor Battye
Trevor Battye is a partner at Clevers Media, a consulting firm based in Vancouver, that specializes in marketing, branding, website development, and advertising sales across various media (print, online, social media). Trevor is currently a regular speaker at the Simon Fraser Publishing Program and a contributor to the Vancouver Sun Book Club.
Jeffrey Mackie is a poet and literary journalist living in Montreal. Mackie ran in the last Quebec provincial election for the Green Party in Verdun. He has been a lifelong sports enthusiast except for that weird ”I’m an artsy I can’t be into sports” phase. He currently plays left wing on a team in the Montreal Hockey League of the Arts.Jeff Parker
Jeff Parker is the Co-Founder and Director of the DisQuiet International Literary Program, and the author of the novel Ovenman and the short story collection The Taste of Penny. He has taught at the University of Toronto and Eastern Michigan University, and currently he is the Director of the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa.
Sebastian Knight
Sebastian Knight is a poet and philosopher based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. He travels the continent with his dog Buck Mulligan collecting various rocks and counting blades of grass. Though there is overwhelming proof of his existence he assures us he is only a figment of your imagination.
Kenneth Nichols
Kenneth Nichols received his MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State. He teaches writing at two colleges in Central New York.
Rebecca A Eckland
Rebecca A Eckland is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College of California. She also holds two master of arts degrees–one in English and the other in French–awarded by the University of Nevada, Reno. Her work has appeared on USMS.org, as well as in 3/Go Magazine, The Rudder Magazine, Reno News and Review, Tahoe Quarterly, Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul, The MeadoW, and MARY: A Journal of New Writing.
Craig Brownstein
Craig is VP of Media Relations at Edelman, and launched PuckBuddys.com, a hockey blog that now enjoys NHL media credentials and positive notice from sports media and team front offices. Through his experience in rink circles, Brownstein manages the media relations on a pro bono basis for You Can Play, an LGBT sports advocacy organization.
Jonathan Sapers
Jonathan Sapers is a freelance writer and editor in New York. He has published more than a dozen short stories in among others, Confrontation, Pank, Northwest Review, and Short Story America. He is working on assembling a collection of stories to be titled Segues, and a second novel, Serafina. When not writing fiction, he writes regularly about education issues for TC Today and Scholastic Administrator, and irregularly, about other stuff for his blog. For more please go to www.sapersink.com or follow him @Sapuhz.
_____
Paul Vermeersch
Paul Vermeersch is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently The Reinvention of the Human Hand (M&S, 2010). His books have been finalists for the Trillium Book Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and his poetry has been translated into Polish, German, and French. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph for which he received the Governor General’s Gold Medal, and he has taught writing at the University of Guelph and at Sheridan College. He currently lives in Toronto where he is senior editor of Wolsak & Wynn Publishers Ltd.
Greg Santos
Greg Santos is the author of Tweet Tweet Tweet (Corrupt Press, 2011) and The Emperor’s Sofa (DC Books, 2010). He is the poetry co-editor for the online literary magazine, carte blanche. His writing has appeared in Matrix, Branch, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Feathertale, and Dingers: Contemporary Baseball Writing (DC Books, 2007), among other publications. He lives in Montreal with his wife and daughter. Visit his website at http://about.me/greg.santos
______
Gary Barwin
Gary Barwin is a poet, fiction writer, composer, multimedia artist, and performer. His music and writing have been published, performed and broadcast in Canada, the US, and elsewhere. His publications include the poetry collections:Franzlations [the imaginary Kafka parables] (with Craig Conley & Hugh Thomas; New Star), The Obvious Flap (with Gregory Betts; BookThug), and The Porcupinity of the Stars. Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario and online at garybarwin.com. If you were the last word of this bio, you’d be relieved.
___
John Goldbach
John Goldbach is the author of Selected Blackouts, a story collection, and his new book, The Devil and the Detective, a novel, is available this April with Coach House Books.
Tim Livingston
Tim Livingston has worked at Fox affiliate KTVU as well as the Dunedin Blue Jays, Toronto’s High-A affiliate on the Gulf Coast of Florida as play-by-play broadcaster and team beat writer. He now works for his community radio and TV stations, the Sonoma Sun networks, doing football and basketball commentary for his high school alma mater of Sonoma Valley High. He is also the host of “Los Livingston Brothers” with his two younger brothers every Sunday night at 11 p.m. PST on www.sunfmtv.com. His work can be found at The Outside Corner, which is a part of The Bloguin Network.
Laura Broadbent
Laura Broadbent lives in Montreal. Follow her as she follows Christ @gnarwalrus.
Quinn MacDonald
Quinn MacDonald has one year left in the student bubble at the University of Victoria, where she majors in English and minors in professional writing. Upon release, she hopes to be a journalist, but for now she works for The Warren Undergraduate Review, and is a senior editor and copywriter for Concrete Garden magazine, a new urban agriculture magazine based in Victoria. She also sometimes writes about politics and other stuff at The Flying V, and has published literary criticism in The Albatross. She grew up playing hockey, but recently made the switch to roller derby. She plays as The Wife of Wrath for the Margarita Villains, and won 2012 Rookie of the Year in her league (Eve’s of Destruction). Follow her on Twitter @quinnmacdonald.
Justin Kinnear
Justin Kinnear lives in Toronto, works at a literary agency, and was production editor for an issue of the literary journal Descant. He has lived in Korea and Iceland and warmed a good bench back in his high school basketball days.
David Tanklefsky
David Tanklefsky is a radio broadcaster, musician, freelance writer and former minor league play-by-play man. His writing on the media has appeared in Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and TV Guide. His online work has been featured in Thought Catalog and the Batter Chatter baseball blog. He lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. Follow him on Twitter @davidtanklefsky.
Alex Skillin
Alex Skillin is a writer who lives in Boston. He is the proprietor of www.BallGameBanter.com, a blog on the AL East and works as a Staff Editor for SoxProspects.com. His writing has also appeared at The Classical, Get Real Basketball, and The Celebrity Cafe, along with a few other places across the Internet. He is also currently a marketing intern at the MIT Press and has a curious affinity for modern American literature. You can follow Alex on Twitter or Tumblr.
Ashley Varela
Ashley is a freelance writer, baseball aficionado, and social media addict from Seattle, Washington. She currently contributes to Prospect Insider and High Heat Stats, though you may find her lurking around four or five other blogs at any given time. Her first book is forthcoming, either in this or the next decade.
Michael Lista
Michael Lista is the author of Bloom. He is the poetry columnist for the National Post, and the poetry editor of The Walrus. A second book, The Scarborough, will appear in 2014.
Diane Elayne Dees
Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane, who lives in Louisiana, publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.
Nick Thran
Nick Thran’s most recent collection of poems, Earworm (Nightwood Editions, 2011), won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Halifax Hal, a children’s poem with illustrations by Gabe Foreman, will appear under Bayeux Arts’ ‘Odd Little Books’ imprint this summer. He lives in Montreal.