Jude Neale

Jude Neale was shortlisted for the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize (Ireland), TheInternational Poetic Republic Poetry Prize (U.K),The Mary Chalmers Smith Poetry Prize(UK), The Wenlock International Poetry Prize (UK), finalist for Pandora's Poetry competition (Canada) and  finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award (Canada), and was nominated twice for an Internationally renowned Pushcart award for her third book, A Quiet Coming of Light.

She is an opera singer and poet who enjoys performing with other genres as diverse as dance, tabla or viola. Thomas Beckman and Jude have just released a collaborative EP (Places Beyond) a blend of viola and the spoken word.

She recently contributed to the League of Canadian Poets, Women's Caucus, a chapter on collaboration for their upcoming anthology of essays on this subject. She was one of the jurors of this year’s Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

When she is not writing, she is singing in underground parking lots.

Emily Joy Sullivan

Emily Joy Sullivan is a composer, choir director, and educator from Buffalo, NY. She holds a B.A. in Music, Magna Cum Laude, from Amherst College and an M.S. in Early Childhood and Childhood General Education from the Bank Street College of Education. Ms. Sullivan is currently working towards a Master's Degree in Music Composition at SUNY Fredonia, where she studies with Paul Coleman; she has also studied with Eric Sawyer, Peter Klatzow, and Robert Deemer. Ms. Sullivan’s music is characterized by lyricism and lush expressivity, and is deeply influenced by folk, pop, and world music. Ms. Sullivan loves writing musical theater, and is especially interested in writing for the female voice. She strives to incorporate her feminist principles into her compositions, writing songs that give characters agency and expressivity. 

Ms. Sullivan continues to teach, and has been active in directing and/or founding singing groups for the last ten years. She received a 2012 Davis Projects for Peace grant to bring together South African youths of different backgrounds through community choral singing. She also fundraised for and founded a youth choir in Queens, NY.  Her community choir in New York touched the lives of adults from dozens of countries, and continues to perform six years on. She is currently “spreading seeds” through her role designing and teaching Chorus and Music Theory curricula at the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology.

Glenn Sutherland

Glenn Sutherland, composer of vocal, choral, and instrumental works, has studied composition with Michael Trew, Lane Price, and Jocelyn Morlock. His vocal, chamber and orchestral works have been performed by soloists and ensembles in Canada and in Europe. Performers include Melanie Adams (soprano), Heidi Krutzen (harp), the Grand River Chorus, Erato Ensemble, the McGregor-Nesselroad-Barnes Trio, the Vancouver Brass Project, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Jean Coulthard Readings), and recently by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as part of their 25th anniversary New Music Festival concert series. Winnipeg’s award-winning Esprit de Choeur featured their commission of three pieces in their June 2016 concert, as well as during the 2015 Tapestry International Festival for Women’s Voices. He has been published by Mayfair Music and Avondale Press. He is the 2016 winner of the Canadian Music Centre (Prairie Region) Emerging Composer competition.

When not composing, he is a conservation biologist, primarily focussed on issues involving endangered species.

Sammy Shatner

Sammy Shatner moved to Canada in 2011 from North Africa to pursue a post-secondary education in music. Having had no prior formal musical training, he completed the one-year Basic Musicianship Program at Douglas College and subsequently the two-year University Transfer Program. At Douglas College he studied classical guitar with renown performer and professor Michael Strutt, and composition with renown Vancouver-based composer and music professor Doug Smith. In 2015 he transfered to the University of British Columbia to continue his undergraduate degree in composition, studying with Stephen Chatman and Dorothy Chang. He has composed for various solo instrumentalists and chamber ensembles and has had works performed at Douglas College, the Vancouver Academy of Music, and the School of Music at UBC. He has also worked with UBC singers and poets from the Vancouver Thursdays Writing Collective to create new art songs under collaborative pianist and professor Rena Sharon, founder of the Vancouver International Song Institute. 

Sammy is currently completing the last year of his Bachelor of Music at UBC.

Sajia Sultana Kabir

Sajia Sultana Kabir is a dancing songwriter, theatrical bellydancer, and singing actress based in Vancouver BC. She is passionate about classical and folk art forms, science fiction and fantasy, avant-garde and DIY performance, and social justice. She wishes to share her sometimes disturbing, always compassionate visions of the world with a wide audience.

Zachary Kenefick

Zachary Kenefick is an artist usually located around Long Beach, California. He has studied poetry, sculpture, and composition at CSU Long Beach. His artistic output is often centered around the tension between virtuosity and amateurism and the role the institution and canon has on both. He enjoys working with technology and collaborative processes. He often works with dancers and visual artists, and enjoys large scale collaborations— recently taking up curation of eclectic concerts and gatherings as an element of his artistic practice. He plays the saxophone decently well and the banjo endearingly poorly.

Roisin Adams

Roisin Adams is a Vancouver based composer/arranger/pianist/educator. Upon completing her studies at Vancouver Community College, she was named the winner of the 2013 Contemporary Composition Competition, Chris Gage Memorial Award, Fred Bass Scholarship, and the Andres Espinoza Memorial Scholarship. In association with NOW Society, she curates a monthly series called, "Here and NOW" which is dedicated to fostering community within the improvised music genre. Recent highlights include participating in SFU'S LAUNCH! 2015 showcase of emerging artist and performing with contemporary Flamenco/Tap dancer Dayna Szyndrowski and harpist Elisa Thorn in their interdisciplinary project, Written on the Body. While not composing, Adams performs regularly as a soloist and in her independent project, Hildegard's Ghost. Roisin Adams is the recipient of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. She currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Michel Beaudry

A freelance writer for the last thirty-five years, Michel Beaudry has roamed the world in search of great and unique stories to tell. He has eaten whale with Greenland Inuit, hiked above the clouds with Inca descendants, retraced the Silk Route with Kyrgyz horsemen and followed Morocco’s hashish trail with Berber friends. And his thirst for adventure is far from quenched. Inspired by the classical edict mens sana in corpore sano, the sexagenarian continues to push the performance envelope, whether he’s setting first ski tracks on a remote peak in northern Alaska or performing a live storytelling gig for a gaggle of graduate art students. His award-winning tales have appeared in GQ, Reader’s Digest, Outside, Sports Illustrated, The Globe & Mail, Canadian Business, the much lamented Equinox Magazine, Britain’s Daily Mail, France’s Le Monde and dozens of other publications. The widowed father of two amazingly talented daughters, Beaudry is currently enrolled at SFU’s The Writer’s Workshop, where he is hard at work on his first novel.

James Coomber

James Coomber is a composer, sound designer and musician based in Vancouver.  His artistic interests lie heavily in collaborative work, where the intermingling of disciplines pushes the boundary of audio-visual forms.  He is a graduate of music composition and theatre collaboration from the School of Contemporary Arts at SFU.  Recent highlights include composing for and performing in Noam Gagnon’s This Crazy Show (coming to to the Dance Centre this Fall), doing copyist work for Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone’s Onegin, creating the music and sound for rice and beans theatre’s Mis Papás, and presenting work at the Prague Quadrennial, one of the world's largest scenography festivals.  Next up you can hear his music at Dancing on the Edge in Joshua Beamish/Move: the company’s fighting chance.

Maren Lisac

Maren Lisac is a composer and musician currently based in Vancouver.

Donato Mancini

The interdisciplinary practice of Donato Mancini focuses mainly on poetry, bookworks, text-based visual art and cultural criticism. He is the author of four books of poetry: Ligatures (New Star 2005) Æthel (New Star 2007), Buffet World (2011) and Fact 'n' Value (2011). He is also the author of the critical work You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence (2012) . His current book, Loitersack (2014), is a book-length poetics essay in the form of poetry, poetics, theory, theory theatre, questions and laugh particles. He is a PhD candidate in English at the University of British Columbia.

Jordan Alexander Key

Jordan Key, a resident of Arizona, has been studying composition since 2005. He has received performances from around the country, most recently featuring “Salve Regina,” performed by the College of Wooster’s Symphonic Choir in 2013 and "Vision of Cataclysm," by the Charlotte New Music Festival in 2014. His recent academic work has culminated in his thesis “Spirosony,” a study of spirituality through music, focusing primarily on experiences of music in chant+ In conducting his research, he spent residencies throughout a year at monasteries around the world, including the Abbey of Solesmes in France and the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

Daniel Cowper

Daniel Cowper is a poet, writer, and editor, among other things. His poems have appeared in literary reviews throughout Canada, including Prairie Fire, Vallum, Arc Poetry and CV2, and he serves as the poetry editor for Pulp Literature.

Adam Scime

Adam Scime has been praised as "…a fantastic success…" (CBC) and "Astounding, the musical result was remarkable" (icareifyoulisten.com). Awards received for his work include The Socan Young Composer's Competition, The Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music, Esprit’s Young Composer Competition, and the Electro-Acoustic Composer’s Competition. Recent notable
performances include Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, New Music Concerts, The Esprit Orchestra, l'orchestre francophonie, The Continuum Ensemble, a feature in the Emergents Series at the
Music Gallery, the Hamilton Philharmonic New Music Festival, the UofT New Music Festival, and broadcasts on CBC Radio. Future projects include a new Opera for FAWN and the Thin Edge
Collective, commissions for The Esprit Orchestra, the Array Ensemble and New Music Concerts for upcoming seasons. Adam is currently studying as DMA student with Gary Kulesha at UofT
and previously with Paul Frehner at UWO.

Andrew McEwan

Andrew McEwan is the author of the book Repeater, shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, and chapbooks including Input / Output, This Book is Depressing and Conditional. He lives in Vancouver.

Lucas Oickle

Lucas Oickle is an award-winning Nova Scotian composer currently based in Vancouver. In late 2014 he was awarded the prestigious "2011 Canada Games Young Artist of Excellence Award" by the Nova Scotia Talent Trust, which carries a $10 000 monetary prize.

Other accolades include winning the spring 2013 TEMPO Call for Scores, the Penthelia Singers' inaugural 'Canadian Folk Song Arranging Competition', the Via Choralis 2014 Composition Competition, and the 'Green Dot Composer Competition'. Previously, Lucas was a composer-in-residence for the Bathurst Chamber Music Festival and was the inaugural "Featured Student Composer" of the NSYO's 12/13 season.