issue twelve: guest-edited by Jim Johnstone

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #12

edited by Jim Johnstone

see here for Jim’s introduction

the twelfth issue features new work by:

M. Travis Lane

Tess Liem

Matthew Zapruder

bill bissett

Tracy Wai de Boer

Téa Mutonji

Roxanna Bennett

Diane Seuss

Eduardo C. Corral

Triny Finlay

Douglas Walbourne-Gough

Kirby

Sandra Simonds

Conor Mc Donnell

$5 + postage / + $1 for Canadian orders; + $2 for US; + $6 outside of North America

Canadian/American/International rates (including shipping

Canadian orders $6.00 CAD American orders $7.00 CAD International orders $11.00 CAD

Contributor notes:

Roxanna Bennett is a disabled poet gratefully living on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nations covered by the Upper Canada Treaties (Whitby, Ontario). She is the author of Unmeaningable, (Gordon Hill Press, 2019), the bp Nichol Chapbook Award-nominated unseen garden (knife | fork | book, 2018), and The Uncertainty Principle (Tightrope Books, 2014).  

bill bissett is originalee from lunaria  left  in th first childrns shuttul  th oxygen had gone   it was sew peesful ther whn yu cud breeth  i hope peopul can undrstand  if we dstroy th oxygen heer  we dont have th opsyun uv sumwher els 2 go at ths time aneeway  have livd in halifax vancouvr london on n now toronto  show at th secret handshake  latest book  b r e t h / th treez uv lunaria  selektid rare n nu pomes 1957-2019 talonbooks n latest cd  th ride  w pete dako  at reedings n in sum stores n on bandcamp

Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press. He's the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Hodder Fellowship and the National Holmes Poetry Prize, both from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. 

Triny Finlay is a queer writer whose most recent poetry collection, You don’t want what I’ve got (Junction Books), details her experiences living with debilitating mental illnesses, their treatments, and stigma. She is also the author of Splitting Off (Nightwood), Histories Haunt Us (Nightwood), and the chapbook Phobic (Gaspereau). Her writing has appeared in anthologies and journals such as Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets, Arc Poetry Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The Fiddlehead, The London Reader, The Malahat Review, and Plenitude. She lives in Fredericton, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at UNB. You can find her at trinyfinlay.com, @TrinyFinlay, and @cast_iron_pan.

Kirby’s chapbooks include Cock & Soul, Bob’s Boy, The World is Fucked and Sometimes Beautiful, She’s Having A Doris Day (K|F|B, 2017) and the upcoming, What Do You Want To Be Called? (Anstruther Press, 2020). Their full-length debut, This Is Where I Get Off is now in its second printing (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019) and is currently being adapted for the stage. Kirby is the owner and publisher of knife | fork | book. www.jeffkirby.ca

Tess Liem’s writing has appeared in the Boston Review, Room Magazine, PRISM, Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2019 and elsewhere. Her debut collection Obits. was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award and won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry in 2019. She lives in Montreal, Tiotia:ke—unceded Haudenosaunee and Mohawk territories.

M. Travis Lane has lived in Fredericton New Brunswick since 1960, and has published 19 books of poetry. Her poem “Lameque” is from Keeping Count (Gordon Hill Press, 2020).

Conor Mc Donnell is a physician and poet. He has published two chapbooks in Canada, The Book of Retaliations (Anstruther Press), and, Safe Spaces (Frog Hollow Press). He received Honourable Mention for The Fiddlehead’s 2018 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the RawArtReview 2019 Charles Bukowski Prize, and was runner-up in the Vallum 2019 Contemporary poetry prize. His work has featured in The Fiddlehead, Vallum, Grain, Carousel, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) and many others. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two dogs and is currently writing/rewriting/completing/shredding his first full poetry manuscript.

Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Téa Mutonji is a poet and fiction writer. Her debut collection, Shut Up You’re Pretty, is the first title from Vivek Shraya’s imprint, VS. Books. It was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award and the Trillium Book Award. Mutonji lives and writes in Toronto.

Diane Seuss’s most recent collection, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, (Graywolf Press 2018) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. frank: sonnets is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2021. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Seuss was raised by a single mother in rural Michigan, which she continues to call home.

Sandra Simonds is an award-winning author of seven books of poetry: Atopia (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), Orlando, (Wave Books, forthcoming in 2018), Further Problems with Pleasure, winner of the 2015 Akron Poetry Prize from the University of Akron Press, Steal It Back (Saturnalia Books, 2015), The Sonnets (Bloof Books, 2014), Mother Was a Tragic Girl (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2012), and Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books, 2009). Her poems have been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Best American Poetry 2015 and 2014 and have appeared in many literary journals, including Poetry, and the American Poetry Review.

Tracy Wai de Boer is a writer from Calgary currently living in Toronto. She is mixed race and explores mixed identity through much of her writing. Her aim is to experience life in all its fullness and express this through writing and making. Her first chapbook, maybe, basically, is forthcoming from Anstruther Press. 

Douglas Walbourne-Gough is a poet and mixed/adopted Mi'kmaw from Corner Brook, Newfoundland. His first collection, Crow Gulch, was published with Goose Lane's Icehouse poetry imprint (Sept 2019). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC Okanagan) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing (UNB Fredericton). 

Matthew Zapruder is the author most recently of Father’s Day, and Why Poetry. He is editor at large at Wave Books, and teaches in the MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.