Category: Announcements
News that is created by and focused on the QAF.
Queer Arts Festival
PORTALS: June 6 – 28, 2025
Festival Theme: Portals
Portals are gateways to transformation—liminal spaces of transition, possibility, and change. For the 2025 Queer Arts Festival, Portals explores queer and trans experiences of crossing thresholds, stepping into new identities, and imagining futures beyond imposed boundaries. Presented in partnership with Centre A, this year’s curated visual exhibition also examines diasporic journeys, highlighting the intersections of queerness, migration, and belonging. In a time of rising anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric, Portals is a call to reimagine the world, celebrating art’s power to forge new paths, challenge oppression, and open doors to liberation. Step through—what’s on the other side?
Festival Listings
Queer Arts Festival 2025: PORTALS
Plans are well underway for Queer Arts Festival 2025: PORTALS. The full festival line-up will be announced very soon, but in the meantime, we’re excited to share one of our guest artists: accordionist and visual artist Erica Roozendaal (Netherlands), who will present her one-person show, NACHTUIL / Night Owl, in partnership…
ArtParty! 2025
ArtParty! | June 21 | 5-8pm | Centre A | Step through the portal and into the party! Join us on June 21 from 5–8pm at Centre A for the 2025 QAF ArtParty, launching our signature exhibition Portals—a powerful exploration of migration, identity, and transformation, curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong and…
Varied Editions
VARIED EDITIONS — Curated by Edward Fu-Chen Juan & Cheryl Hamilton | Jun 6 – 28 | Tues – Sat, 12 – 6 | On Main Gallery | Free | Now in its third year, Varied Editions celebrates the diversity of printmaking practices within queer communities. Borrowing its name from…
Night Owl
Night Owl: Erica Roozendaal, accordion | Sunday, June 8 @ 7pm | SUM gallery | Pay-What-You-Wish | We’re thrilled to present the QAF debut of Dutch accordionist Erica Roozendaal. Visiting us from the Hague, Roozendaal shares an intimate program at SUM gallery that includes music by the iconic Pauline Olivieros,…
QAF Community Art Show
QAF Community Art Show | June 14 – 28 | Tues – Sat, 12 – 6 | SUM gallery |OPENING RECEPTION: June 14, 5 – 8pm | Free | It’s no exaggeration to say the QAF Community Art Show is the backbone of our festival. It was the original event,…
QAF Curated Visual Art Exhibition: Portals
Curated Visual Art Exhibition: PORTALS — Curated by Mark Takeshi McGregor & Diane Hau Yu Wong | June 21 – August 23 | Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 | Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art | Free | Our QAF 2025 theme is fully realized in this special…
Queer Clothing Swap
Queer Clothing Swap | June 22, 2 – 4pm | Sun Wah Centre, 4th Floor | Free | Looking to spice up your summer wardrobe? Look no further: We’re bringing back our super popular Queer Clothing Swap! Bring your clean, gently worn, unscented clothes over to the Sun Wah Centre…
Long Live Kings
Long Live Kings — Directed by Romi Kim | June 22, 1pm | SUM gallery | Free | Long Live Kings is a multi-episode series that puts a much needed spotlight on the vibrant Drag King scene on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (aka Vancouver)….
Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner
Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner | Granville Island Jazz | June 25, 2pm | Performance Works | Pay-What-You-Wish Bruno Hubert is one of Canada’s most expressive jazz pianists, with a deep sense of swing and melody that evokes Erroll Garner, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans—while always remaining unmistakably Bruno!…
Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan
Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan | Granville Island Jazz | June 26, 8:30pm | Ocean Artworks | $15 at the door 2025 JUNO nominees for Jazz Album of the Year (Group), creative Indo-Jazz fusion band Raagaverse pays homage to two historical and culturally-significant genres: classical Hindustani music and jazz. Led by vocalist…
Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen
Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen | Granville Island Jazz | June 28, 5pm | Revue Stage | Pay-What-You-Wish Anchored in improvisation, Vancouver guitarist Allie Lynn King blends the roots of blues and jazz with the heaviness of doom metal and the abrasion of noise. Bassist Nate McBride…
Presenting a Trio of Events in Partnership with Vancouver International Jazz Festival
Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner
Bruno Hubert Trio with Brad Turner | Granville Island Jazz | June 25, 2pm | Performance Works | Pay-What-You-Wish Bruno Hubert is one of Canada’s most expressive jazz pianists, with a deep sense of swing and melody that evokes Erroll Garner, Herbie Hancock, and Bill Evans—while always remaining unmistakably Bruno!…
Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan
Raagaverse featuring Cassius Khan | Granville Island Jazz | June 26, 8:30pm | Ocean Artworks | $15 at the door 2025 JUNO nominees for Jazz Album of the Year (Group), creative Indo-Jazz fusion band Raagaverse pays homage to two historical and culturally-significant genres: classical Hindustani music and jazz. Led by vocalist…
Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen
Allie Lynn King, Nate McBride, and Kenton Loewen | Granville Island Jazz | June 28, 5pm | Revue Stage | Pay-What-You-Wish Anchored in improvisation, Vancouver guitarist Allie Lynn King blends the roots of blues and jazz with the heaviness of doom metal and the abrasion of noise. Bassist Nate McBride…
Plans are well underway for Queer Arts Festival 2025: PORTALS. The full festival line-up will be announced very soon, but in the meantime, we’re excited to share one of our guest artists: accordionist and visual artist Erica Roozendaal (Netherlands), who will present her one-person show, NACHTUIL / Night Owl, in partnership with Vancouver Intercultural Orchestra.
NACHTUIL / Night Owl
Daan is thirty years old, six years old, ten, fifteen… All at the same time.
Daan lives in an ordinary village. In an ordinary house with a father and a mother. She goes to public school, enjoys going to gym and music lessons. And her favorite activity is making beautiful things with her imagination; music, drawings or stories.
All sorts of things happen that she can’t explain. For example, she feels all kinds of things she doesn’t want to feel, very strange, but these feelings sometimes come out of the blue. As if someone else enters her body and takes over control! At times she gets the blame for things that happen, that she has nothing to do with. And sleeping… seems impossible, because at night she hears all kinds of voices that just never shut up. Only when she dares to really listen to what she actually hears in the night does she find out why she just won’t sleep and why so many unexplainable things happen.
Night owl is a beautiful and moving performance for ages ten and up that subtly addresses the theme of incest and growing up in an unsafe environment. Erica Roozendaal—performer, visual artist, and accordionist—wrote the script and performs the monologue in a restrained, captivating manner while alternating with playing the accordion.
Submissions are NOW OPEN for the 2025 QAF Community Art Show!
Submissions are OPEN for our QAF Community Exhibition, held at SUM gallery this summer!
We’re inviting artists in our local Queer communities to contribute works that explore our 2025 festival theme, “Portals” – though all submitted works will be considered. We are delighted to be hosting the exhibition at QAF headquarters SUM gallery in the Sun Wah Building in Chinatown, from June 13 – June 28, 2025.
We are considering 2-D visual works, sculpture, digital art, and interdisciplinary works for submission.
Submission deadline: April 30, 2025
Submissions are accepted via email at submissions@queerartsfestival.com
Submission Checklist:
Submissions for the QAF Community Art Show must include:
- Artist name and preferred email address for contacting.
- Digital images of artworks (individual files, jpgs, or links to a website or upload are best.)
- Artwork information for each piece (title, medium, year, dimensions, and price if applicable).
Additional information that is helpful but not required:
- Artist biography.
- Artist statement.
- Resume/cv.
- Headshot.
- Links/social media.
All works must be installation-ready (ie, framed, hanging brackets, wires, etc). QAF will be onsite for installation, but whenever possible Artist’s are encouraged to help!
Pride in Art Society’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) is scheduled for Apr 27th, 2023 at 7pm PST. We invite (and encourage!) everyone to join us for a first look at QAF 2023: Queers in Space (coming this summer!) plus an exclusive dive into our financial reports. ASL Interpretation will be provided.
The AGM will be conducted over Zoom and pre-registration is required. Register to attend here. In order to vote at the AGM, be sure to renew your membership or become a society member. Membership dues are $20 and memberships expire on July 1* each year. (*annual memberships bought in the spring will be active for at least one year from purchase date) Please reach out to info@queerartsfestival.com if the membership fee is a barrier as no-one will be turned away due to lack of funds.
Can’t make it? Even if you are unable to attend the AGM, you can still be counted as an attendee! Please consider showing your support by designating a proxy to vote on your behalf. Our AGM participation numbers are counted for fun money stuff like grants, that allow us to continue our work as a non-profit. Please complete and send your proxy form to info@queerartsfestival.com prior to Apr 27.
it’s not easy being green
Jul 24 – Aug 13, 2021
QAF shows artists upcycling & recycling apocalyptic fear & dread into art & social change. Green symbolizes not only our relationship to each other & the lands we occupy, but also difference & marginalization, exemplified by popular culture green underdogs Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West & Rainbow Connection, Kermit the Frog. It’s not easy being green, fighting for a world that consistently rejects us. With imminent climate catastrophe upon us, we witness the world grappling with the end times, but when were the queered privy to life outside the apocalypse?
Green is the complex terrain of extended kinship ties of Indigiqueer/two-spirit and queer settlers. Green spectrals haunt the hyphened margins of the subaltern; enduring perpetually frequent gaslighting(s) of post-traumatic settler-colonial and concurrent disorders. Together/apart WE endure our own private apocalyptics. Cataclysmic temporal end-points that exist as seemingly fixed and an unavoidable global terminus – from which Indigiqueer/queer resurgence erupts relentlessly into the ongoing colonial.
QAF shows artists cast as see-ers/oracles/alchemists upcycling/rebranding/reclaiming/transgressing/transforming apocalyptic visions towards queer utopic landscapes, transmuting fear, dread and a collective broken heart of forced disslocations with departures and arrivals, using art as transformative praxis and practice towards social and spiritual metamorphoses.
QAF 2021 Dispersed: it’s not easy being green runs 3 weeks from your computer, our home base, the Sun Wah Centre in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown, and Vancouver’s only cemetery, Mountain View Cemetery.
When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why,
but why wonder?
– Kermit the Frog
Buy festival PASS here:
2021 EVENTS AT A GLANCE
ArtParty!
Sat Jul 24, 7-10pm
Festival Opening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
QAF’s Gala opening party: With music, dazzling views, and art on multiple levels of the Sun Wah Centre to explore, we’re launching the Dispersed QAF in champagne style (have a glass or two or a nibble or three on us) with DJ O Show!
it’s not easy being green: Curated Visual Art Exhibition and Tour
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13, from 12 – 6pm
Visual Art | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Lower Ground
Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman curate artists who transmute our collective broken heart of forced dislocations with departures and arrivals, using art as transformative praxis and practice towards social and spiritual metamorphoses.
Tue Jul 27, 5pm
Visual Art Tour | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
Come together for our Visual Art Tour with the curators Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour and SD Holman, guest artists, and a gallery of intimate friends old and new.
Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13
Sonic Installation | around False Creek & Online
An interactive audio/radio/networked soundwork from Bobbi Kozinuk that invites the user to explore themes around the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on queer and diverse communities. Featuring Jae Lew.
Language as a Virus: The Tour
Mon Jul 26, 5pm
Audio Art Tour | Creek Side CC (TBC) False Creek
Take a stroll or a bike ride along False Creek and tune in to WENR 88.9FM Isolation Radio with your host Bobbi Kozinuk and explore her multi-layered work, Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories.
Studio (ob)Sessions
Mon July 26 – throughout festival
Digital Discourse | Online
In the connective void that has been this pandemic pause, QAF takes you on a few house calls. We visit with several festival artists in their creation spaces, a digital dialogue to allow a connection from the artist in their corner of space to you and where you call your place.
Screen Greenery
Sat Jul 31, 9pm
Media Art Screening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Curated by Fergie and Ben! Rooftop screening of very queer and rather green short films.
Queerotica
Mon Aug 2, 8pm | Literary Readings | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop & Online
Curated by Josie Boyce, slip into something a little more comfortable and enjoy readings by Vancouverite writers.
Attend in person or at home via streaming.
Ceremony for Rebel Spirits – Onibana Taiko and Alvin Erasga Tolentino
Sat Aug 7, 8pm
Dance and Musical Performance | Mountain View Cemetery
*NEW* ONLINE | Tue Aug 10 | 24 hours
When Japanese folk tradition meets punk, audience members are invited to commune with the ancestors via Obon dance, song, sensu (fan) cheerleading, fue, shamisen and kick-ass taiko.
Piano Burning
*POSTPONED* Sun Aug 8, 8pm
Performance Art | Mountain View Cemetery & Online
With Full Circle First Nations Performance, we build on Annea Lockwood’s conceptual classic music composition with a new commission by Lil’wat composer Russell Wallace, a fireproof ball gown created by Métis designer Evan Ducharme, and a piano on fire played by Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa.
Attend in person or at home via streaming.
Glitter is Forever
Fri Aug 13, 7-10pm
Closing | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop
Join us for the festival closing with DJ O Show and your last chance to see all the art @ QAF 2021 with us at the Sun Wah Centre, from the basement, to the SUM gallery, to the rooftop (take it all in!! the art, the views!!).
SATELLITE ACADEMY : Workshops, Community, Discourse +
Multidisciplinary outreach and community programming rooted in the premise that 2SLGBTQ+ lives are relevant and universal as artistic inspirations. Title inspired by writer Sarah Schulman’s Satellite Academy
Kindred Spirits
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13
Community Visual Art | Online
The digital culmination of the Kindred Spirits digital artist residency run by and for 2Spirit and Indigiqueer artists. Guided by Faculty members Dayna Danger, DJ O Show, Raven Davis and Art Auntie Shane Sable, this digital exhibition focuses on re-storying 2Spirit identities and futures through community connection and self-portraiture beyond colonial constructs.
Pride in Art Community Show
Sat Jul 24 – Fri Aug 13, from 12 – 6pm
Visual Art | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer
The community show honours Pride in Art founder, activist, and Two-Spirit artist Robbie Hong’s legacy with an open community exhibition. This year, we’re throwing what was once refused up on our walls. Join community artists in a Salon des Refusés (or perhaps Recyclés) celebrating works that were previously censored or rejected.
Pillows for the Pandemic
Wed Jul 28, 7:30pm
Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Falak Vasa leads us in a pillow-making workshop, based off of their own series of pillows created during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic offering small controllable comforts.
Gathering of Wishes and 1000 Paper Butterflies
Wed Aug 4, 6pm | Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Naoko Fukumaru and Eva Wong in Phase 1 of Mass Reincarnation of Wish Fragments 願片大量転生 (Ganhen Tairyou Tensei), where participants create origami and utilize the ink bleeding process to create a butterfly with their own unique patterns and colours.
Queerer than Queer: Lessons from Nonduality for Deep Planetary Healing
Thu Aug 5 & Fri Aug 6, 7pm | Workshop | SUM gallery or Online
Is the universe queerer than we can suppose? From the foot of the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh, Tejal Shah will guide us through this two-part interactive workshop that explores the fine line between illusions and reality. We will explore the possible impact an embodied understanding of nonduality can have on our affective world and on our relationships with ‘others’.
Future programming in the works.
Submissions are NOW OPEN for the 2025 QAF Community Art Show!
Submissions are OPEN for our QAF Community Exhibition, held at SUM gallery this summer!
We’re inviting artists in our local Queer communities to contribute works that explore our 2025 festival theme, “Portals” – though all submitted works will be considered. We are delighted to be hosting the exhibition at QAF headquarters SUM gallery in the Sun Wah Building in Chinatown, from June 13 – June 28, 2025.
Portals are gateways to transformation— liminal spaces of transition, possibility, and change. ‘Portals’ explores queer and trans experiences of crossing thresholds, stepping into new identities, and imagining futures beyond imposed boundaries. Step through—what’s on the other side? 🏃➡️🌀
We are considering 2-D visual works, sculpture, digital art, and interdisciplinary works for submission.
Submission deadline: April 30, 2025.
Submissions are accepted via email at submissions@queerartsfestival.com
Submission Checklist:
Submissions for the QAF Community Art Show must include:
- Artist name and preferred email address for contacting.
- Digital images of artworks (individual files, jpgs, or links to a website or upload are best.)
- Artwork information for each piece (title, medium, year, dimensions, and price if applicable).
Additional information that is helpful but not required:
- Artist biography.
- Artist statement.
- Resume/cv.
- Headshot.
- Links/social media.
All works must be installation-ready (ie, framed, hanging brackets, wires, etc). QAF will be onsite for installation, but whenever possible Artist’s are encouraged to help!
Indigenous Burlesque | July 17 | 7 pm
Embrace your too-muchness with bombastic burlesque brought to you by the badass babes of Virago Nation, Turtle Island’s first all-indigenous burlesque collective. Featuring special guests Monday Blues and Lynx Chase! Whether you’ve seen it before or always wanted, now’s your chance to relish the many facets of indigenous sexual rematriation from the comfort of your living room.
https://www.viragonation.ca/ https://www.facebook.com/ViragoNation/
Performer Bios
Shane Sable “Mover, Shaker, Mischief Maker; the Furiously Flirtatious Force of Nature”
2Spirit Gitxsan artist and activist Shane Sable has slayed stages all over Vancouver in front of and behind the scenes since 2011. Shane has an abiding hunger for audience engagement and delights in the tension created by breaking the 4th wall of burlesque. Shane is the convening member of Virago Nation – Turtle Island’s first all-indigenous burlesque collective and Festival Administrator for the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival.
RainbowGlitz is one of Virago’s Nations founding members and Vancouvers Rainbow Slut spreading her love medicine in a mix of classic, nerdlesque, exotic dance and pussy cat doll hip hop movements. This Haida, Squamish, Musqueam and black artist will leave you wanting to throw your gold at the end of her rainbow.
Instagram: @jaibrend
Scarlet Delirium: Vancouver BC’s Raven Goddess! The Kwakiutl Indigi-Babe! Scarlet Delirium has been enjoying the slow burn of Burlesque and Cabaret since 2010 and is a founding member of Virago Nation. During the daylight hours doubles as Costume Designer for herself and her Burlesque family.
Instagram: @scarlet_delirium
Sparkle Plenty is Vancouver’s glamedian, weirdlesquer, and word-maker-upper who has been delivering beautifully bizarre burlesque acts for over 10 years! This fiery goddess is Cree and Metis with mixed heritage and is a proud sister of the first ever all Indigenous burlesque group, Virago Nation. You can find her teasing and emceeing with the Screaming Chicken Theatrical Society as well as on stages all over Vancouver, Toronto, Las Vegas and more.
Instagram: @sparkleplentys
Monday Blues is an Afro-Indigenous burlesque artist, and has been performing burlesque professionally since 2011. Monday has traveled the globe as a solo female adventurer and loves to live outside her comfort zone. Her most recent endeavours include being an avid entrepreneur, both in Sex Work and coaching capacities, as well as pursuing her passion on the burlesque stages all over Canada and the US. Monday strives to exist without limits and wants to help others feel just as empowered.
Instagram: @missmondayblues
Lynx Chase: A true showpony at heart, Lynx Chase has always been passionate about movement and performance arts. Over the years she has trained in a variety of disciplines ranging from Aerial Hoop, Silks, Contortion, Partner Acrobatics, Bellydance & Capoeira; however it wasn’t until she discovered Pole Dancing in 2012 that she found her true vocation. Lynx has been professionally teaching in Vancouver since 2015 and has also showcased her gravity defying acts at various events and festivals across the province such as Retro Strip Show, Bass Coast and Shambhala Music Festival. It is her hope to continue to share her craft with the world by demonstrating the strength, sensuality, artistry and grace that goes hand in hand with the art of pole and exotic dance.
Instagram: @laylaylay
Closing Binge | July 26 | 4 PM
Get your dress jammies on, grab a drink and binge-watch the entire Queer Arts Festival with us (take it all in!!). Expect surprises and special prizes.
Dance Performance | July 25 | 7 PM | July 26 | 2 PM
In his Swan Song, contemporary dance legend Noam Gagnon sashays the fine line between pain and pleasure in a fetishization of something glamorous and beautifully twisted: a monster beautified.
Synopsis: This piece is a reflection on the quest for love, through revisiting the worlds of childhood, both real and imagined.
How do we feel when we are hammered or deformed under pressure, but not quite enough to break? How can we be malleable and flexible, deform and reform without losing our core selves?
In ‘This Crazy Show,’ the body becomes a place of transformation, of transmutation, and of transfiguration. Alternately agitated, delicate and humourous, Noam Gagnon choreographs and performs, pushing himself to his physical limit to explore and expose “the art of artifice” in a culture obsessed with pretending authenticity. ‘This Crazy Show’ explores just how precarious and ambiguous identity can be, through the evolution of the body and the self as both are continuously morphing, unfixed and boldly celebrated.
“Because I dream, I’m not.” – Léolo
I wanted to take up the challenge of exploring new avenues of creation by playing with the range of humanly possible transformations, transmutations, and transfigurations. ‘This Crazy Show’ tackles the theme of the perpetual quest for love by revisiting the worlds of childhood, real and imagined, through the bionic woman as superhero metaphor.
“We gratefully acknowledge the support of the McGrane-Pearson Endowment Fund.”
Visit Vision Impure website.
Drag Performance | July 24 | 7 pm | 
The QAF proudly welcomes The Darlings—Continental Breakfast, PM, Rose Butch and Maiden China—to the stage, ahem, screen, with a new performance created around the festival theme of ‘wickedness.’ The multidisciplinary, non-binary drag performance collective has been taking the Vancouver scene by storm for the last two years and is currently titillating social-distancing audiences through aptly titled online performances Quarantine I & II. Their work challenges the boundaries of conventional drag, and explores genderqueer, non-binary, and trans experience through the use of movement, poetry, performance art, theatre, and immersive/interactive installation.
The Darlings are Chris Reed, Desi Rekrut, Rae Takei and Kendell Yan.
This event is ASL interpreted.
Speculative Theatre | July 23 | 7 pm |
Underground Absolute Fiction is an immersive play-meets-punk-concert, inspired by the apartment theatre of 1980s Poland. It invites audiences into a secret meeting at a post-Communist home. There, they join a queer punk band and Lena, a Polish-Canadian settler.
Created by Anais West, the co-writer of Jessie Award Nominated musical Poly Queer Love Ballad, Underground Absolute Fiction asks audiences to grapple with the complex legacies of diaspora, queer rights movements, and white supremacy—in both Europe and Turtle Island (Canada). Directed by Fay Nass as an Associate Project with the frank theatre.
Dramaturgy by Veronique West
Featuring AJ Simmons, Claire Love Wilson, Julia Siedlanowska and Sara Vickruck
Cultural Consultant Julia Siedlanowska
Promotional photo by Kimberly Ho
This event is ASL interpreted.
Literary Readings | July 22 | 7 pm |
A Night of Storytelling is back for its fifth year and once again hosted by the much-beloved Danny Ramadan, this time around as a new online experience. Spend a night in with the talented LGBTQ2+ voices of the CanLit scene. Danny brings prominent writers from the Queer and trans community into your homes as they explore their identities through the medium of the written word. A Night of Storytelling features readings from Billy Ray Belcourt, Amber Dawn, jaye simpson, Jillian Christmas, and Erin-Brooke Kirsh.
Curator Danny Ramadan is an award-winning Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker and LGBTQ-refugees activist. His novel, The Clothesline Swing, won multiple awards. His children’s book, Salma the Syrian Chef, is out now.
Jillian Christmas lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam people, where she served for six years as Artistic Director of Versəs Festival of Words. An educator, organizer, and advocate in the arts community, utilizing an anti-oppressive lens, Jillian has performed and facilitated workshops across the continent.
jaye simpson is an Oji-Cree Saulteaux indigiqueer writer with roots in Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. they often write about being queer in the Child Welfare system, as well as being queer and Indigenous. their work has been featured in Poetry Is Dead, This Magazine, PRISM international, SAD Mag, GUTS Magazine and Room. simpson resides on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), səlilwəta’Ɂɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations peoples, currently and colonially known as Vancouver, BC.
Amber Dawn is a writer and creative facilitator living on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, Canada). She is the author of five books and the editor of three anthologies.
Erin Kirsh is a writer and performer. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in dozens of literary journals internationally. Her greatest accomplishment to date is that one time she painted her nails without getting the polish all over the place.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation, and lives in Vancouver. He is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at UBC. His books are THIS WOUND IS A WORLD, NDN COPING MECHANISMS, and A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY.