SPARKS Literary Festival

Violet Browne lives and writes in St. John’s NL. More accurately, she tends to neglect her writing, but she loves thinking about writing and talking about writing when opportunity knocks. Violet is the author of one novel, This Is The House that Luke Built, and is currently procrastinating on a book of poetry and postcards for her mother.

Xaiver Michael Campbell from Kingston, Jamaica, has lived in St. John’s, Newfoundland for over a decade. His work has appeared in the Malahat Review, Riddle Fence and in the anthologies Us, Now and Best Canadian Stories 2024. He was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Xaiver co-authored Black Harbour: Slavery and the Forgotten Histories of Black People in Newfoundland and Labrador with Heather Barrett. A Single Dreadlock is Xaiver’s debut picture book.

Bridget Canning’s debut novel, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, was selected as a finalist for the 2017 BMO Winterset Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, the NL Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. It is currently being adapted to film. Her second novel, Some People’s Children, was a finalist for the 2020 BMO Winterset Award and the Thomas Raddall Award. Her third book and first short story collection, No One Knows About Us, was published by Breakwater Books in the fall of 2022. It has been named a finalist for the 2023 Alistair MacLeod Award.

Bridget holds a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing from Memorial University and a Masters of Literacy Education from Mount Saint Vincent University. In 2019, she received the CBC Emerging Artist Award with ArtsNL. She grew up in Highlands, NL and currently lives in St. John’s.

Patrick Cotter is an Irish poet, born in Cork City where he still lives and works as a literary festival organiser and editor. His poems have been published in journals such as the Financial Times, The London Review of Books, Poetry and Poetry Review. He is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. His poems have been translated into over a dozen languages and he has given readings of his work across the Northern Hemisphere. Quality Control at the Miracle Factory is his fourth full collection.

Mary Dalton is the author of five books of poetry, among them Merrybegot,_ Red Ledger_, and Hooking: A Book of Centos, released in 2013 by Vehicule Press. Her work has been anthologized in Canada, the U.S., Ireland, England, and Belgium.

Merrybegot, winner of the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award and a nominee for the Pat Lowther Award, is also an audiobook produced by Rattling Books. Red Ledger was short-listed for the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award and was named a Top Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail. Hooking: A Book of Centos, published in 2013, was shortlisted for the Newfoundland and Labrador Poetry Award (the E. J. Pratt Poetry Award) and the national Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, and named a Top Book of the season by CBC and The Globe and Mail.

Dalton lives in St. John’s, where she is Emerita Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Poet Laureate of the City of St. John’s. In 2009 she founded The SPARKS Literary Festival, which she also directed until 2016.

Danielle Devereaux's poetry collection The Chrome Chair was published in April 2024 by Riddle Fence Debuts. Her chapbook, Cardiogram, is published by Baseline Press (2011). Quelle Affaire, a poem which appears in the chapbook and full-length collection, has been turned into a short film by filmmaker Ruth Lawrence. Danielle’s writing has appeared in Riddle Fence, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Newfoundland Quarterly, Elle Canada and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011. She lives in St. John's NL.

Lori Doody is a visual artist, children’s author and illustrator from St. John’s, Newfoundland. Since 2017 she has had thirteen picture books published including Capelin Weather, The Puffin Problem, Mallard, Mallard, Moose, Paint the Town Pink, Mr. Beagle Goes to Rabbittown, Mr. Beagle and the Georgestown Mystery, Catalina, The Land Puffin, Lana Llama, Mr. Beagle Climbs Signal Hill, The Island, Agnes’s Garden and The Pup.

Terry Doyle is a writer from the Goulds, Newfoundland. His first collection of short fiction, DIG, was a finalist for The Writer’s Union of Canada’s Danuta Gleed Literary Award, The ReLit, The Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, The Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction and the Alistair McLeod Short Fiction Award. His first novel, The Wards, was longlisted for the Winterset Award and a finalist for the ReLit, The Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction and the Margaret Duley Award. He is currently working on two novels and a stage play.

francesca ekwuyasi, a mentor in the MFA Fiction program, is a learner, artist and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria.

She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). Butter Honey Pig Bread was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. Butter Honey Pig Bread placed second on CBC’s Canada Reads: Canada’s Annual Battle of the Books, where it was selected as one of five contenders in 2021 for “the one book that all of Canada should read.”

francesca’s writing has appeared in the Malahat Review, Transition Magazine, Room Magazine, Brittle Paper, the Ex-Puritan, C-Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Canadian Art, Chatelain and elsewhere. Her short story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.

She also is the author of the recent Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements, a multi-genre collaborative book with Roger Mooking.

Joshua Goudie is the author of three children's books, Jack and the Hurricane, Jack and the Magnificent Ugly Stick and the collection of narrative poetry, Where the Crooked Lighthouse Shines, the latter of which was selected for inclusion in Canadian Children's Book Week 2023. His writing has been awarded the NL Arts and Letters Percy Janes First Novel Award and the 2023 and 2024 Riddle Fence Prize for Fiction.

Nicole Haldoupis is a queer writer from Toronto who lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her first book, Tiny Ruins (Radiant Press, 2020), was shortlisted for four 2021 Saskatchewan Book Awards and the 2022 Bressani Literary Prize. She won first place in the 2023 Gregory J. Power Poetry Award and received an honourable mention in the 2024 award. The novel she wrote for her MA thesis at Memorial University received the 2024/2025 Department of English Award for Thesis Excellence. She’s currently a PhD student at Memorial University, a creative writing instructor at the College of the North Atlantic, and a managing editor of Paragon Press. She plays guitar in a girl band called HAGS.

Joel Thomas Hynes is a multidisciplinary, award-winning artist from Newfoundland. Hynes has worked in the Canadian film and television industry for more than fifteen years as a writer, an actor and a director. He wrote and directed two award-winning short films, Clipper Gold and Little Man, and is the author of numerous acclaimed books and stageplays, including the novels Down to the Dirt, Right Away Monday and We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night. His screen adaptation of his book Say Nothing Saw Wood was nominated for four Canadian Screen Awards, and he has performed numerous lead and principle roles for TV and film, including Down to the Dirt, Book of Negroes, ReGenesis, Rookie Blue, Republic of Doyle and Orphan Black.

Born in Northern Ontario, Cara Kansala has called Newfoundland home for over twenty years. A full-time folk artist and children’s book author/illustrator, Cara is known for her colourful depictions of familiar Newfoundland sights such as frolicking laundry lines, icebergs and rural outport villages. Cara’s work is a recognizable fixture throughout the province and often brings smiles and laughter wherever it lands.

Cara’s most recent book The Ewe Who Knew Who Knit You, published by Breakwater Books, won the 2024 WritersNL Award for Children’s Literature.

Jim McEwen grew up in Dunrobin, Ontario. He is a graduate of the English and Creative Writing Master’s Program at Memorial University of Newfoundland and winner of the Cuffer Prize (2015) and the Leaside Fiction Contest (2019). At the moment, he is teaching at Algonquin College in Ottawa. Fearnoch is his first novel and he is slowly working on the second.

Don McKay is the multi-award-winning author of thirteen previous books of poetry, including Paradoxides, Strike/Slip, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, and Camber: Selected Poems, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and a Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year. Angular Unconformity, a collected poems, appeared from Goose Lane in 2014. McKay has taught poetry in universities across the country. He presently lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Craig Francis Power is an artist and writer from St. John's. His first novel, Blood Relatives, won the Percy Janes First Novel Award, the Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers, the ReLit Award and was shortlisted for the BMO Winterset Award. His other books include The Hope and Skeet Love. His visual art has been shown at galleries across Canada.

Susie Taylor lives in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland. She is the author of Vigil and Even Weirder Than Before. Her short stories have appeared in several literary magazines including Geist, PRISM International, Room Magazine and The Fiddlehead. Taylor is the associate fiction editor at Riddle Fence.