Contributors to Issue 84

Blaine Allan is a filmmaker and Associate Professor in the Department of Film Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. His films include You Are Not Alone.

Bernardo Atxaga belongs to the group of young Basque writers who began publishing in his mother language, Euskara, in the 1970s. His most recent novel is Obabakoak, which has been translated into twenty-five languages.

Ken Babstock’s most recent collection is Airstream Land Yacht. He lives in Toronto.

Baziju is a pen name of Roo Borson and Kim Maltman.

Catherine Bush is the author of three novels, most recently Claire’s Head. She lives in Toronto, is the Associate Coordinator of the University of Guelph’s Creative Writing MFA, and is at work on a new novel.

Lynn Coady is the author of Strange Heaven, Saints of Big Harbour, and Mean Boy, as well as a collection of stories called Play the Monster Blind. Most recently she edited The Anansi Reader: Forty Years of Very Good Books. She is currently writing in Edmonton.

Charles Dickens is one of the most popular English writers of all time. His novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty was published in his own weekly serial that ran from 1840 to 1841.

Deborah Digges is the author of four previous collections of poetry, including Vesper Sparrows and Trapeze, and two memoirs, Fugitive Spring and The Stardust Lounge. She lived in Massachusetts, where she was a professor of English at Tufts University until her death in 2009.

Mark Doty has published eight books of poems, including Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems and Theories and Apparitions, and four of nonfiction prose, most recently Dog Years. He has a new teaching position at Rutgers University, and is currently at work on a book about Walt Whitman called What is the Grass?

Douglas Dunn is a modern dancer/choreographer living in New York City. He began presenting work in 1971 while a member of Merce Cunningham & Dance Company, and of Grand Union, an improvisatory ensemble. He works with artists, composers, lighting designers, and filmmakers to present a multifaceted theatrical image.

Geoff Dyer’s most recent books are The Ongoing Moment, a sort of history of photography, and Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, a novel (sort of).

Seth Feldman is a Professor at Toronto’s York University in Department of Film. In 2002, he programmed the Toronto International Film Festival's Canadian Retrospective series on Allan King, and edited the book Allan King: Filmmaker, launched in conjunction with the retrospective.

Amaia Gabantxo is a writer and the translator of several Basque novels and poetry collections, and her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She moonlights as a flamenco singer.

Charlotte Gray is the author of seven non-fiction bestsellers of history and biography, including Sisters in the Wilderness and Reluctant Genius. She spends winters in Ottawa and summers in an Ontario cottage with a rippling floor. Her book about the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush will be published in 2010.

Peter Harcourt’s numerous books and hundreds of articles have raised the profile of Canadian film both nationally and internationally. He has written extensively on such cinematic luminaries as Jean-Luc Godard and Ingmar Bergman.

Halldór Gudmundsson was born in Reykjavík 1956, and studied literature in Reykjavík and Copenhagen. He has worked as a publisher in Iceland for almost twenty years and his biography of Halldór Laxness, The Islander, has been translated into several languages.

Jim Harrison is a novelist and poet who divides his year between the Mexican border and Montana. A new book of three novellas, The Farmer’s Daughter, will be released in late December by Grove Press.

Marni Jackson has been Chair of the Literary Journalism program at Banff for the last three years. She is the author of two books, The Mother Zone and Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign. She is currently working on a book for Thomas Allen Ltd., in which she compares her twenties to her son’s generation’s twenties.

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the author of the novels Perfecting and The Nettle Spinner, and the story collection Way Up. She teaches writing through The University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and online through The New York Times Knowledge Network.

Elizabeth Macklin is the author of two books of poetry, A Woman Kneeling in the Big City and You’ve Just Been Told, and the translator of the Basque poet Kirmen Uribe’s Meanwhile Take My Hand. She is currently at work on poems for a third collection.

Eugene McCabe was born in Glasgow in 1930, but has spent most of his life in Ireland. For five decades he’s farmed on the Monaghan/ Fermanagh border where he still lives. He is the author of Death and Nightingales and Tales from The Poorhouse, as well as a number of plays and short stories.

W. S. Merwin is one of the most widely read poets in America. In a career spanning five decades, he is best known for his poetry, translations, and environmental activism. His latest book of poems is called The Shadow of Sirius. He lives in Hawaii.

Colleen Murphy is a playwright and filmmaker who lives in Toronto. Her work includes the plays The December Man (L’homme de décembre), The Goodnight Bird, The Piper, and Beating Heart Cadaver; and the films Out in the Cold, Girl With Dog, War Holes, Desire, and Putty Worm.

Sarah Polley has been acting since she was four years old. In the past ten years, she has written and directed five short films and the feature film Away From Her, adapted from Alice Munro’s short story, “The Bear Came Over The Mountain.” She is currently working on her first documentary, The Dark Room, and her second feature film, Take This Waltz.

Helmut Reichenbächer studied Music and English Literature at the University of Cologne and completed a Ph.D. with a focus on Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. He is currently a public servant in Ontario.

Daniel Robbins was director of the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design when he organized a Walter Murch retrospective in 1967. He was also a guest lecturer at a variety of institutions, including Yale, the University of Iowa, and Princeton. He died in 1995.

Robin Robertson is from the northeast coast of Scotland. His fourth collection of poetry, The Wrecking Light, will be published in early 2010.

Kilby Smith-McGregor is a Toronto-based graphic designer whose writing has appeared in Cyclops Review and the Dublin Quarterly. Her theatre background includes collaborations with Small Wooden Shoe, Nightwood Theatre’s playwright’s unit, and the inaugural Urjo Kareda Residency at the Tarragon Theatre. She is a graduate of York University’s creative writing program.

Sam Solecki teaches English literature at the University of Toronto. A former editor of The Canadian Forum, he is the author of Prague Blues: The Fiction of Josef Škvorecký. Currently he spends far too much time thinking about the Etruscans and François Truffaut.

José Teodoro is the author of the plays The Tourist, Steps, and Slowly, an exchange is taking place; and co-author, with Mexican photographer Laura Barrón, of Cathedral, a three-metre-long text/photo book. He has written about film and literature for Film Comment, subTerrain, Stop Smiling, The Globe and Mail, and Cineaste.

Sharon Thesen was a student and friend of Robin Blaser from 1966 until his death in May 2009. She teaches in the Department of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan in Kelowna, B.C. Her latest book of poems is The Good Bacteria.

David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Have You Seen? A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, and a memoir, Try to Tell the Story.

Eleanor Wachtel is the host of CBC Radio’s “Writers & Company” and “Wachtel on the Arts.” Four books of her interviews have been published: Original Minds, Writers & Company, More Writers & Company, and Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields.

Patrick Watson began his broadcasting career in 1943. The Creative Director of the Historica Foundation (The Heritage Minutes), he has published fourteen books, including four novels, the most recent being Wittgenstein and the Goshawk: A Fable for Adults. Finn’s Thin Book: A History of Ireland in Comic Verse is looking for a publisher, and a collection of limericks is in preparation.

Don Yorston lives in Bellingham, Washington. His current projects include building fine furniture, taking cooking courses, and baking thousands of cookies for a men’s shelter.