Category: Author

Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Fred Wah was raised in the interior of British Columbia and received his BA in English from UBC. He was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter Tish, the editor of Sum magazine (1963-65), and later co-editor with Frank Davey of SwiftCurrent (1984-1990). Wah is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Pictograms from the Interior of B.C. (1975), Loki is Buried at Smoky Creek: Selected Poems (1980), Music at the Heart of Thinking (1987), and Diamond Grill (1996). In 2018, he and poet-activist Rita Wong co-authored beholden: a poem as long as a river. Wah’s critical work includes the award-winning Faking it: Poetics & Hybridity (2000).

Roy Kenzie Kiyooka (1926-1994) was a painter, writer, photographer, and educator born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He participated in the Emma Lake Workshops (1957-1960) with Barnett Newman, Clement Greenberg, and Will Barnett before moving to Vancouver in 1959, where he had an important impact on the arts scene. From 1971-72 he taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, from 1965-70 at Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University, and finally at The University of British Columbia. His poetry collections include Kyoto Airs (1964), Nevertheless These Eyes (1967), StoneDGloves (1970), Transcanada Letters (1975), The Fontainbleau Dream Machine (1977), and The Pear Tree Pomes (1987). Kiyooka was awarded the Order of Canada in 1978.