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Our Authors

    • Gary Barwin

      Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist and the author of 26 books including Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and Bird Arsonist (with Tom Prime) His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was long listed for Canada Reads.

    • Laura Besley

      Laura Besley is the author of (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. She has been widely published in online journals, print journals and anthologies, including Best Small Fictions (2021). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Micro Fiction and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. She tweets @laurabesley

    • Gregory Betts

      Gregory Betts is a poet and professor at Brock University. His work consistently explores concrete, constrained, or collaborative poetics. He is the author of 11 books of poetry, including recent titles such as Foundry (Ireland 2021), The Fabulous Op (Ireland 2021, with Gary Barwin), and Sweet Forme (Australia 2020). His poems have been stencilled into the sidewalks of St. Catharines, Ontario and selected by the SETI Institute to be implanted into the surface of the moon. He performed at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, as part of the Cultural Olympiad, and has travelled and performed extensively across Canada, the US, and Europe. He is the curator of the bpNichol.ca Digital Archive, and author of the award-winning scholarly monographs Finding Nothing: the VanGardes 1959-1975 and Avant-Garde Canadian Literature.

    • Oisín Breen

      Irish poet, doctoral candidate, and journalist, Oisín Breen, a Best of the Net Nominee and Erbacce prize finalist, is published in 107 journals in 21 countries, including in Agenda, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, Decomp, and The Tahoma Literary Review. Breen’s second collection, Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín (Downingfield) has received wide critical acclaim. It follows his critically well received debut, 'Flowers, All Sorts, in Blossom...' (Dreich, 2020).

        • Alex de Fircks

          Alex de Fircks is a family historian, writer, and scholar. Her academic awards include two Bachelor of Arts degrees (one with Honours), a Diploma of Family History, and a Master of Research, where her thesis examined how to narrativise family history ethically and authentically. She has written several short stories and articles. In 2013, Alex was the highest-placed Monash University student in the Monash University Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing, as part of the Emerging Writers Festival. Her entry was published in the anthology “Promise: Monash University Undergraduate Prize Shortlist” 2013. In 2020, Alex was shortlisted for both the St Kilda Short Story Competition and the Genealogical Society of Victoria Writing Competition. Her story for the latter was published in the GSV’s Ancestor magazine. Alex is passionate about research, history, genealogy, and family stories. Her ancestors originate from Russia and the Baltic States, and she is especially interested in the conflicts that helped shape their lives. Alex’s research into her family history is ongoing, and she writes stories about her ancestors on her website www.alexdefircks.com.

        • S.C. Flynn

          S.C. Flynn was born of Irish origin in a small Australian town and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in many magazines around the world. His poetry collection The Colour of Extinction (Renard Press, October 2024) was The Observer’s Poetry Book of the Month for October 2024. Flynn’s poetry focuses in part on the natural environment and in part on psychological states, as well as exploring what it means to be returning diaspora Irish. An Ocean Called Hope is the fruit of many years of writing and life experience, including living in various countries. He has been a nature lover since being surrounded by all kinds of creatures in country Australia. S.C. Flynn is also a lifetime jazz musician and singer, having grown up in a musical family. He is married to an Italian and speaks Italian fluently. An obsessive reader, Flynn has always been very happy when surrounded by books.

          • Jeremy Allan Hawkins

            Jeremy Allan Hawkins a French-American poet and author of enditem. (Downingfield Press, 2023), and A Clean Edge (BOAAT, 2017), selected by Richard Siken as winner of the 2016 BOAAT Chapbook Prize. His poetry has been selected for the Best New Poets anthology series, and the extended program of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennial. He is a lecturer at the Strasbourg National School of Architecture and pursues research at the points of contact between poetic practices and spatial design.

          • David Harrison Horton

            David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor, and curator. He’s the author of the well-reviewed, genre-breaking Maze Poems (Arteidiola, 2022). His chapbooks include Model Answers (CCCP Chapbooks/Subpress, 2024), BeiHai (Nanjing Poetry, 2005), and Pete Hoffman Days (Pinball, 2003). His chapbook, Salt & Iron, was serialized by In Parentheses in 2020. His poetry has appeared in many respected publications, including The Oregon Review, Boog City, Denver Quarterly, The Belfast Review, Variant Literature, Roi Fainéant, Yolk, Verbal Art, and Pennsylvania English. David has done poetry readings and performances across the United States, in Mexico, China, and Hong Kong. The venues include places like City Lights Books (San Francisco), Unnameable Books (New York), San Francisco State University, Picasso Machinery (New York), SUNY Buffalo, Hothouse (Chicago), Stanford University, University of Virginia, University of Las Vegas, Northwestern University (Chicago), Camera Stylo (Beijing), and Poetry Out Loud (Hong Kong), among others. He has published and edited the poetry publications Chase Park (2000-2004), WORK (2008), and currently edits the Pushcart Award-winning SAGINAW (2011-present). He currently curates the neo-benshi (movie-talking) nights for the Spittoon Collective in Beijing. You can learn more about David at his website: davidharrisonhorton.com.

                  • Rochelle MacQueen

                    Rochelle MacQueen is a Canadian photographer. She uses photography as a creative outlet to appreciate beauty in all the little things. An old  decoration on a wall or aged wallpaper, peeling up to reveal the previous  layers underneath, can tell a story. Rochelle enjoys finding those details and  capturing them in a moment in time. She believes that pictures can help us keep precious memories in our hearts when our minds may forget the details. Decorations may be replaced, wallpaper may be removed or covered up, but photographs help us to remember the beauty of what once was long after it is gone.

                  • M. G. Mader

                    M. G. Mader is a Canadian-Australian writer, town planner, and the managing director of Downingfield Press. With a career spanning writing, publishing, and town planning, he brings a wealth of expertise to his endeavours and is deeply passionate about history, local governance, and town planning. An alumnus of Cape Breton University and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Mader has authored three books and regularly contributes to public discourse through his letters to the editor. He was awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal (Canadian version) in recognition of his volunteerism. Outside of his professional pursuits, Mader is a devoted father and husband, an avid film photographer, analogue enthusiast, and keen explorer of politics, vexillology, and modern history.

                  • Melissa Miles

                    Melissa Miles is an American-born New Zealand writer who has strong connections to both countries. She began writing when she was five years old. This is her first published book. She is an accomplished actor and filmmaker and she also works in the rescue and rehabilitation of animals. She lives with her partner Mark in Lyttelton Te Whakaraupō, Aotearoa New Zealand.

                    • Nathanael O’Reilly

                      Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet; he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Arlington. His books include Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021); (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020); BLUE (above/ground press, 2020); Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017), named a Book of the Year in Australian Book Review; Distance (Ginninderra Press, 2015); Suburban Exile (Picaro Press, 2011); and Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010). More than 300 of his poems have appeared in journals & anthologies published in 14 countries. O’Reilly received an Emerging Writers Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts in 2010 and has been a writer-in-residence at Booranga Writers’ Centre in Australia and All Saints Heritage Centre in Ireland. He has given invited readings in Australia, Canada, England, Hungary, Ireland, Italy and the United States. His poetry has been shortlisted and highly commended in competitions in Australia, Ireland and the United States. O’Reilly is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.

                        • Mark Russell

                          Mark Russell has published three full collections prior to Come to the River: Men Who Repeat Themselves (erbacce press, 2022), Shopping for Punks (Hesterglock, 2017), and Spearmint & Rescue (Pindrop, 2016). His pamphlets are published by Red Ceilings, tall-lighthouse, and Kattywompus. He won the Magma Poetry Judge's Prize in 2020, and the erbacce-poetry prize in 2022. His poems have been published in a variety of magazines and journals, including Stand, Shearsman, Poetry Wales, The Manchester Review, The Rialto, Tears in the Fence, The Interpreter's House, Molly Bloom, Gutter, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Salzburg Review, Tentacular, and Blackbox Manifold.

                            • Lydia Unsworth

                              Lydia Unsworth’s latest collection is Mortar (Osmosis Press). Pamphlets include These Steady Bulbs and Residue (above/ground), cement, terraces (Red Ceilings), and YIELD (KFS). Work can be found in places like Ambit, Banshee, Bath Magg, Blackbox Manifold, The Interpreter’s House, Oxford Poetry, Shearsman, SPAM, and Tentacular. Her forthcoming collection, Arthropod, will be published by Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers in 2024.

                              • Olga Woronoff

                                Countess Olga Konstantinovna Kleinmichel was born into an aristocratic Russian family with close ties to the monarchy. Her grandfather was a close friend of Tsar Nicholas I, and Olga became acquainted with the daughters of Tsar Nicholas II. In 1914, Olga married Lieutenant Pavel Alexeievitch Woronoff, a naval officer on the Tsar’s personal yacht, the Standart, and one of the love interests of Grand Duchess Olga. Their wedding was attended by the Imperial family.