The Launch of Poetry in Transit 2021/22 

Rob Taylor

Barbara Nickel is an award-winning writer and editor. Essential Tremor is Nickel’s third collection of poetry. Her first collection, The Gladys Elegies, won the Pat Lowther Award and her second, Domain, was a Quill & Quire Best Book of the Year. Nickel’s work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies including The Walrus, Poetry Ireland Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, and The Malahat Review. Nickel is also an author of books for young people, one of which won a BC Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year. Her other children’s titles have been nominated for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award, as well as several Young Readers’ Choice awards. Barbara Nickel lives and writes in Yarrow, BC.

Billeh Nickerson is the author of six previous books, including Artificial Cherry, which was nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Award. He a past editor of both Event and Prism International, and co-editor of the groundbreaking anthology Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay Male Poets. His latest book is Duct-Taped Roses. He lives and works in Vancouver where he is the co-chair of the Creative Writing Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Donna Kane is a writer living in Rolla, BC. Her poems, short fiction, reviews and essays have been published widely. She is the author of the non-fiction book, Summer of the Horse, and of three books of poetry, most recently Orrery, a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award. Poems from Orrery were also featured in A Sky Full of Poems with Dava Sobel presented by Hampton’s Observatory and Guild Hall and in a podcast for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s, Voyages to Mars: Dreaming. In 2020 she received the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship for her “exceptional dedication to discover community potential and empower ownership through arts and culture.

Patrick Friesen has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays, has written stage and radio plays, and has co-translated, with Per Brask, five books of Danish poetry, including Frayed Opus for Strings & Wind Instruments by Ulrikka Gernes, which was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2016. In January 2020, he released a CD, Buson’s Bell, which consists of composed, as well as improvised music, and text. He lives in Victoria, BC.

Dallas Hunt is Cree and a member of Wapsewsipi (Swan River First Nation) in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. His first children's book, Awâsis and the World-Famous Bannock, was published through Highwater Press in 2018. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Literature at the University of British Columbia.

Junie Désil is of Haitian ancestry. Born of immigrant parents on the Traditional Territories of the Kanien’kehá꞉ka on the island known as Tiohtià꞉ke (Montréal), raised in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg). Junie has performed at various literary events and festivals. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, PRISM International, The Capilano Review, and CV2. A recovering academic, a UBC alumnus, and most recently a participant in Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio, Junie currently works in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, on the unceded and Ancestral Lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh). Junie’s debut poetry collection Eat Salt|Gaze at the Ocean (TalonBooks, 2020) is currently shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

Marita Dachsel is the author of There are Not Enough Sad Songs, Glossolalia, and All Things Said & Done. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry, and the ReLit Award. Her play Initiation Trilogy was nominated for both a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Original Script and the Critics’ Choice Innovation Award. She lives with her family on Lekwungen territory in Victoria, British Columbia.

Tanja Bartel holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in numerous venues including Geist, the Antigonish Review, and the American Journal of Medical Genetics. She lives in Pitt Meadows, BC.