Our Contributors
Introducing the regular and semi-regular contributors to The Seaboard Review of Books. If you’re interested in contributing a review (or reviews), please contact James at editor[at]theseaboardreview[dot]ca.
Ian Colford has published three novels and two collections of stories. Evidence was published in 2008 by Porcupine’s Quill and won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and a ReLit Award. The Crimes of Hector Tomás followed in 2012. Published by Freehand Books of Calgary, it won Trade Book of the Year at the 2013 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. Perfect World was published by Freehand in 2016 and shortlisted in the book design category at the 2017 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. In 2019, A Dark House was published by Nimbus Publishing of Halifax and was shortlisted for a ReLit Award and the Alistair MacLeod Prize in Short Fiction at the Atlantic Book Awards. In 2022, The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard won the Guernica Prize and was published by Guernica Editions in November 2023. Witness, a sequel to Evidence, will be published in 2026 by Galleon Books of Moncton, New Brunswick. In lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You can learn more about him on his website.
Naomi MacKinnon lives in Truro, Nova Scotia, with her family. She’s the happy duck behind The Happy Duck Bookshop & Readery, where she’s able to share her love of books with whoever walks through the door. Naomi can also be found talking about books online at Consumed by Ink.
Emily Weedon is a CSA award-winning screenwriter and author of the dystopian debut Autokrator, with Cormorant Books. Her novel Hemo Sapiens was published in September 2025 with Dundurn Press. Visit her website here.
Anne M. Smith-Nochasak grew up in rural western Nova Scotia, where she currently resides and teaches part time after many years of working in Northern communities. She’s 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; 2024). She’s 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, Instagram, X, Facebook, and Substack.
Melanie Marttila (she/her) is an #ActuallyAutistic SFF author-in-progress, writing poetry and tales of hope in the face of adversity. Her poetry has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, Polar Starlight, and Sulphur, and her debut poetry collection, The Art of Floating, was published in 2024 by Latitude 46. Her short fiction has appeared in SuperCanucks, Through the Portal, and Pulp Literature. She’s a settler writing in Sudbury, or ‘N’Swakamok, on Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, home of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and the Wahnapitae First Nation, in the house where three generations of her family have lived, on the street that bears her surname, with her spouse and their dog.
Chris Reed is a freelance book publicist (@reedbookspublicity) and occasional book reviewer based in Toronto.
Ezra Anderson is a writer and bookseller living in Toronto.
Heather Babcock’s debut novel, Filthy Sugar, was published by Inanna Publications in 2020. She’s had short fiction and non-fiction 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’s 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 in both fiction and non-fiction. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her husband, daughter, and a grumpy grey cat named Ben. She’s 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 (b. 1992, London, Canada) is a theatre-trained filmmaker and the author, most recently of his non-fiction debut, The Writing on the Wind’s Wall: Dialogues About ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ (Guernica Editions, 2026), as well as a forthcoming sophomore poetry collection, here lies the refugee breather who drank a bowl of elsewhere (Biblioasis, 2027). He lives abroad.
Samantha Jones (she/her) is a poet, editor, and earth scientist based in Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary, Alberta). She’s a Black Canadian and white settler with roots in Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario. Her debut poetry collection, Attic Rain (NeWest Press, 2024), won the 2025 Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2025 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Sam is one of six Land and Labour Poetry Collective members who co-edited the anthology I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis, which was published by Roseway in 2025. Sam is currently a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Health Arts Research Centre, University of Northern British Columbia, researching poetic inquiry as a method to connect climate and weather to experiences of wellness. Visit her website, Bluesky, and Instagram.
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.
Selena Mercuri is a Toronto-based writer, editor, book reviewer, publicist, and social media manager. She holds a bachelor’s in political science from the University of Toronto and a certificate in publishing from Toronto Metropolitan University, where she received the Marsh Jeanneret Memorial Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, The Literary Review of Canada, The Dalhousie Review, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire, The Ampersand Review, The BC Review, The Seaboard Review, The Hart House Review, The Trinity Review, and The /tƐmz/ Review.
Selena was the recipient of the 2023 Norma Epstein Foundation Award for Creative Writing and a finalist in the Hart House Poetry Contest. She’ll begin the University of Guelph’s MFA program in Creative Writing in the fall. Selena is a publicist with River Street and a social media associate at The Rights Factory. Visit her website here.
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 bachelor’s and master’s 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 doctorate in contemporary Canadian literature and cultural institutions.
Stein has been writing literary essays and cultural commentary for nearly two decades. Since completing her doctorate, she’s 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 and 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 Awards. Most recently, she published the collection 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 a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She’s 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.
Dawn Mockler is a multimedia artist best known for her cartoons drawn under the nom de plume dawnymock. She was awarded the art award from Bathurst High School in 1984. She’s a member of the Association of Canadian Cartoonists and CartoonStock.com. Her art has been included in Herné Bay Cartoon Fest; 1001 Visages in Val-David, Quebec; Aislin’s Favourite Covid Cartoons from around the World, Vancouver Science World; and The Globe & Mail. She’s donated many drawings and paintings to local charities and school fundraisers. Her work is available on CartoonStock and Twitter. She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Gordon Phinn (October 28, 1952–April 4, 2026), a long-time resident of Oakville, Ontario, was active in literary production since 1975, with several titles in a variety of genres to his credit: non-fiction, fiction, poetry, criticism, and memoir. His early critical work for Books in Canada and Paragraph is collected in It’s All About Me, and his four-year reviewing stint at WordCity will soon be available as Joy in All Genres. Other recent essay collections include Bowering and McFadden and Laughing at the Universe of Lies and Consciousness: A Primer. His work also includes the novel An American In Heaven, the memoir Moving Through Many Dimensions, and the poetry collection Winter, Spring and Eternity’s Seduction. You can view his celebration of life eulogies here.
Known as Canada’s Mary Oliver, Cynthia Sharp is the Writers International Network Vancouver Poet Laureate. She’s the author of Ordinary Light, a first-prize winner in the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Book Awards for BC Authors, as well as in the International Impact Book Awards in Sustainability and Contemporary Poetry. She also penned Rainforest in Russet and The Light Bearers in the Sand Dollar Graviton. Her fiction, poems, creative non-fiction, and reviews can be found in many literary journals, including CV2, untethered, The Miramichi Reader, The Pitkin Review, and Prism and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology.
Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she grew up without electricity or running water. She won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize for her poetry collection Northerny. She posts weekly at Reviews of Books I Got for Free or Cheap (on Substack), and she review for journals and for The Seaboard Review of Books.
Gina Catherine Grant is an artist, writer, and former contemporary dancer. She lives in Menahqesk/Saint John, New Brunswick, with her tuxedo cat, Richie. Her writing has appeared in The Seaboard Review of Books, It’s Burning Off, and Billie.
Katie Ingram is a freelance journalist and the author of Breaking Disaster: Newspaper Stories of the Halifax Explosion and The Undesirables: A History of Rockhead Prison. She’s also a part-time instructor with the University of King’s College School of Journalism, Writing and Publishing.