Our Contributors
Introducing our regular and semi-regular contributors to TSR.
Ian Colford’s stories, reviews, and commentary have appeared in Canadian literary publications from coast to coast and online in journals and book blogs. Evidence, a collection of short fiction, was published in 2008 by Porcupine’s Quill and won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award; Evidence was also shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the ReLit Award. A novel, The Crimes of Hector Tomás, followed in 2012. Published by Freehand Books, it won Trade Book of the Year at the 2013 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. Perfect World, a novella, was published by Freehand in 2016 and shortlisted in the book design category at the 2017 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. In September 2019, a collection of short fiction, A Dark House, was published under the Vagrant Press imprint of Nimbus Publishing. A Dark House was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Prize in Short Fiction at the Atlantic Book Awards, and awarded Bronze in the 2020 Best Short Fiction category by The Miramichi Reader. In 2021 A Dark House was shortlisted for a 2020 Relit Award. In 2022, his novel manuscript, The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard, was awarded the Guernica Prize and was published by Guernica Editions in November 2023. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Lisa Timpf is a retired HR and communications professional who lives in Simcoe, Ontario. Her poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and book reviews have appeared in New Myths, Star*Line, The Future Fire, and other venues. Lisa’s speculative haibun collection, In Days to Come, is available from Hiraeth Publishing. You can find out more about Lisa’s writing and artwork at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/
Naomi MacKinnon lives in Nova Scotia with her husband, three kids, a dog, three cats, and a bunny. She works in the children's department at the beautiful Truro Public Library where she loves to read all the picture books and play with the puppets. She blogs about (mostly) Canadian and Atlantic Canadian books at Consumed by Ink.
Emily Weedon is a CSA award winning screenwriter and author of the dystopian debut Autokrator, with Cormorant Books. Her forthcoming novel Hemo Sapiens will be published in September 2025, with Dundurn Press. https://emilyweedon.com/
Anne M. Smith-Nochasak grew up in rural western Nova Scotia, where she currently resides and teaches part-time after many years working in northern communities. She has self-published three novels using FriesenPress's services: A Canoer of Shorelines (2021), The Ice Widow (2022), and River Faces North (Taggak Journey, Book 1, being released in early September 2024). She is currently a member of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia. Anne can be found reading, kayaking, gardening, renovating, or exploring the woods with her golden dog Shay while her cat Kit Marlowe supervises the house when she isn't writing or teaching. Anne can be reached through her website https://www.acanoerofshorelines.com/ or on X, IG, and FB
Heather Babcock's debut novel Filthy Sugar was published by Inanna Publications in 2020. She has had short fiction and nonfiction essays published in many literary journals including Descant Magazine, The Humber Literary Review and The Toronto Quarterly. In 2015, her chapbook Of Being Underground and Moving Backwards was published by DevilHousePress. Babcock has experience as both a performer and an organizer of open mic and reading events. She is currently working on a novel tentatively titled The Memory of Crows.
Christina Barber is a Vancouver-based writer, dramaturge, artist, and educator. Her poetry has appeared in The Whimsical Poet, and she contributed to the Vancouver City Poems Project.
Pamela Sinclair is a writer and lifelong reader. She enjoys reading multiple genres both fiction and non-fiction. She lives in Halifax, NS with her husband, daughter, and a grumpy grey cat named Ben. She is currently working on her first novel.
Laura Patterson is a Registered Acupuncturist and a Food Inspector from rural New Brunswick where she lives with her husband and twin boys. When she's not busy with life's craziness, you'll find her with a warm drink in hand and her nose in a book.
Kevin Andrew Heslop: Musician, published poet, theatre-trained actor, award-winning filmmaker, independent curator, global arts journalist. Born 1992 in Canada. Currently exhibiting OF AND while in residence with Teatro Oficina. Next book: The Writing on the Wind's Wall: Dialogues about Medical Assistance in Dying. 2025 publications with The Fiddlehead, Amphora, The Seaboard Review, The Miramichi Reader, Parrot Art & more. Downloadable CV here.
Samantha Jones is a poet, editor, and earth scientist based in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary, Alberta). She is Black Canadian and white settler with roots in Nova Scotia, Québec, and Ontario. Her poetry collection, Attic Rain, is available from NeWest Press.
Elana Wolff's cross-genre Kafka-quest work, Faithfully Seeking Franz (Guernica Editions, 2023), received the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Award in the category of Jewish Thought and Culture. Her eighth book of poems, Everybody Knows a Ghost, is forthcoming in 2026.
A former journalist, Melanie Jackson is a free-lance Vancouver writer/editor for corporate communications, magazines, and newspapers.
Melanie is also the author of such middle-grade/young-adult suspensers as the Dinah Galloway Mystery Series (Orca Book Publishers). Like Henry the whale, Dinah is the impulsive type. Other novels by Melanie include The Big Dip, Death Drop and Medusa's Scream. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre named the latter a Best Book, Middle Readers, 2018 and gave Melanie a TD-CCBC Book Week touring-author award. For more information, visit Melanie at The Writers’ Union of Canada. https://writersunion.ca/member/melanie-jackson
Olga Stein is an academic, writer, editor, and university and college instructor. She was born in Moscow, the capital city of the former Soviet Union. She immigrated to Canada with her parents as a child, and has lived in Toronto her entire adult life. Stein earned her BA and MA at the University of Toronto. She studied philosophy, political science, literature, and languages. After serving for two decades in medical and literary publishing, including as chief editor of the literary book review magazine, Books in Canada, she returned to academe, and completed a PhD in contemporary Canadian literature and cultural institutions.
Stein has been writing literary essays and cultural commentary for nearly two decades. Since completing her PhD, she has also been writing short fiction and poetry. She has three children. Love Songs: Prayers to gods, not men is her debut collection of poems.
Danila Botha is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and the ReLit Award and most recently, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness. The title story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The collection won an Indie Reader Discovery Award for Women's Issues, Fiction, and was a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards, and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much On the Inside which was optioned for film. Her new novel, A Place for People Like Us will be published by Guernica this October. Her first graphic novel will be published in 2026 by At Bay Press.