Best Practices: The Scream Alumni Night

Emily Schultz was born in 1974. Her first collection of short stories, Black Coffee Night, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award for Best First Fiction in Canada, and for the ReLit Award. A story from that collection was adapted for television, airing across Canada and the United States. At the time, the Globe and Mail included her in a “Tomorrow's Ondaatjes and Munros” round-up, calling her one of the country’s most prominent writers under 30. Schultz followed up with a novel, Joyland, and a collection of poetry, Songs for the Dancing Chicken, which was named a finalist for the 2008 Trillium Prize. Her newest novel, Heaven Is Small, will release from House of Anansi Press in 2009.

Her writings have appeared in the Globe and Mail, Eye Weekly, the Walrus, Geist, Descant, and several anthologies. She has held the position of editor at two national magazines, run an experimental art space from her home (with artist/writer Brian Joseph Davis), and currently teaches story writing at George Brown College in Toronto.

Evie Christie is a Toronto writer. Her collection of poems, Gutted was published by ECW Press in 2005 and her work has been published in journals and the anthologies including Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets (Biblioasis 2008) and IV Lounge Nights (2008).

Gabe Foreman grew up in Kakabeka Falls, Ontario. His poems have appeared in many of the usual literary journals. He is currently living in Peterborough, where he works as a part time archaeologist.

Jason Guriel is the recipient of the Frederick Bock Prize from Poetry (Chicago) magazine and the author of a collection of poems, Technicolored (Exile, 2006). He lives in Toronto.

Ken Babstock is the author of three books of poetry, Mean, winner of The Atlantic Poetry Prize and The Milton Acorn Award, Days into Flatspin, winner of a K.M.Hunter Award, and Airstream Land Yacht, finalist for the Governor General's Award, The Griffin Prize for Poetry, and winner of The Trillium Prize for Poetry. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Serbo-Croation, and Latvian, and been published widely in Canada, The U.S., and Ireland. Babstock teaches, edits, and lives in Toronto.

Kevin Connolly’s most recent book is Revolver, published in April by House of
Anansi. drift (Anansi, 2005) won the 2006 Trillium Award for poetry. His previous poetry collections include Happyland (ECW 2002) and Asphalt Cigar (Coach House, 1995), which was nominated for the 1996 Gerald Lampert Award. He was founding editor of the influential 1980s literary magazine What!. Connolly lives in Toronto, where he works as a poet, editor, and arts journalist.

Michael Lista has been published in Canada and Britain, most recently in The Malahat Review, Canadian Literature, and the art magazine Border Crossings. He was a finalist for the Arc Poem of the Year Prize, The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, and the Descant/Winston Collins Prize, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Montreal's Mile End.

Priscila Uppal is a Canadian poet and fiction writer born in Ottawa and currently living in Toronto. Among her publications are five collections of poetry: How to Draw Blood From a Stone (1998), Confessions of a Fertility Expert (1999) Pretending to Die (2001) Live Coverage (2003) and Ontological Necessities (2006), all with Exile Editions; and the novel The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002), published to critical acclaim by Doubleday Canada and Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill and translated into Dutch and Greek. Her poetry has been translated into Korean, Croatian, Latvian, and Italian, and Ontological Necessities was short-listed for the prestigious $50,000 Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry. She has a PhD in English Literature and is a professor of Humanities and English at York University. Her second novel, To Whom It May Concern, will be released by Doubleday Canada in spring 2009. For more information please visit
priscilauppal.ca

Stuart Ross is a Toronto poet, fictioneer, editor, and writing teacher. His most recent books are Dead Cars in Managua (DC Books) and I Cut My Finger(Anvil Press). He is also the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and the editor of Peter O'Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems. Visit his online home at hunkamooga.com.