Contributor announcement: Off the Map
Off the Map is coming soon! An anthology of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry by Vancouver writers with lived experience of mental health issues. Featuring writing by these 32 talented contributors.
More about Off the Map: https://bellpressbooks.com/product/off-the-map/
Kate Bird’s creative nonfiction has been published in Queen’s Quarterly, The Sun, Prairie Fire, The Humber Literary Review, and other literary journals. She won third prize in the 2022 Prairie Fire MRB Creative Non-Fiction Contest, her work was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize and the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, and she was featured on Writers Radio. Kate is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. She is the author of three books of newspaper photography, including the bestselling Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from A Decade That Changed the City, which was nominated for the 2016 British Columbia Historical Writing Award, and has been the researcher for numerous books, including Making Headlines: 100 Years of The Vancouver Sun, which won the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award at the 2013 BC Book Prizes. Kate recently received a Professional Development grant from Access Copyright to work on a collection of personal essays. You can find Kate at katebird.ca
Tove Black has an MFA from the University of British Columbia and lives in East Vancouver, on the unceded lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She writes and illustrates literary zines, her novella Lonesome Stars placed third in the 2022 3-Day Novel Contest, and you can hear one of her recent stories at The Tahoma Literary Review’s Soundcloud.
James Boutin-Crawford – Loving husband, devoted father and grandfather, true friend.
Jessica Cole is an artist and writer based in Vancouver, originally hailing from Calgary. With a lifelong passion for storytelling in all its forms, she delights in blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Whether through visual mediums or the written word, Jessica invites readers into her world, crafting stories that feel like pages from a personal diary stumbled upon by chance. Her work captures the dreamy, poetic essence of everyday life. Off the Map marks Jessica’s second official publication, following her first experience in print at the age of nine, when her short story was featured in a young writer’s anthology series. Currently, she works as a freelance art director and photographer for fashion brands, and in her spare time, she enjoys writing, visiting local cafés, and playing Slime Rancher.
Crisi Corby is a mother, an activist, and a personal essay writer living on the unceded traditional territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her storytelling is influenced by her East Van upbringing, and the intricacies of navigating motherhood through societal pressure and mental health issues. Crisi uses writing as a way to raise awareness for social and political issues, and to spark meaningful conversations.
Gilles Cyrenne has self-published a book of poetry, Emerge, and, with help from Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, has assembled a book of poetry and short memoir that is ready to go to press. He grew up as a farmer/cowboy in Southwest Saskatchewan but now thrives as an urban monkey in the creative chaos of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He regularly publishes political rants and poetry in the Carnegie Newsletter, served for five years as President of the Carnegie Community Centre Association, and is now the Board’s Vice President. He coordinates the DTES Writers Collective and leads a writing group at the Gathering Place Community Centre and an ESL Conversation class. He is a founding member and organizer of the DTES Writers Festival, now in planning for its fourth iteration. Cyrenne is a member of the Megaphone Shift Peer Group. He publishes monthly in Megaphone, a street magazine, and his articles have been picked up by local newspapers across Canada. He was long-listed in Pulp Fiction’s Kingfisher short poem contest, and is published in From the Heart of it All: Ten Years of Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, as well as several anthologies from Thursdays Writing Collective. He has also won the poetry and essay writing contests in the Carnegie Newsletter’s Sandy Cameron Memorial Writing contest and the Best DTES poem in the Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize contest. When not reading and writing, he continues to build stuff with wood for fun, a continuation of a carpentry career that helped him survive and recover from his addiction to alcohol.
Venge Dixon is a white settler writer, poet, visual artist, comic book creator, and musician. She’s a nonbinary lesbian who has lived with mental illness all her life. Her creative work is a deliberate (and occasionally accidental) reflection of this experience. Venge chose creative work to step outside the many externally assigned, designed, and forcefully imposed boxes she saw as surrounding each of us and most punishingly, those of us who experience our lives outside of societal norms or within marginalized communities. Creating became a means not only of self-definition but of personal responsibility in a confusing world which defines her and many others as Crazy.
Jaki Eisman is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU, and her work can be found in Emerge 21, Room, Open Minds Quarterly, and the recent anthology Better Next Year. She is currently writing a tragicomic memoir about the challenges, victories, and spiritual opportunities of a life spent dealing with mental illness. She lives in Vancouver with her fluffy cat, Nunu.
Christy Frisken is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer residing in the city of Vancouver, where the Fraser River meets the Salish Sea, on the unceded lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is the fourth daughter of a Scottish-born father and a mother of English and Scottish settler descent. After working for over 15 years as a bicycle messenger, Christy graduated from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2012 with a major in Visual Arts. Her artwork has been exhibited in various galleries such as Access Gallery, Richmond Art Gallery, and Surrey Art Gallery. “A Faulty Compass” is her first creative nonfiction essay to be published in print.
Merle Ginsburg moved from Ottawa to Vancouver a lifetime ago. She’s been writing non-fiction and poetry off and on for many years. She recently made the decision to take herself seriously as a writer. She created a column entitled “Musings from Lived Experience” for people with lived/living experience of mental health and/or substance use issues. She writes about her colourful childhood and the people, places, and things she sees in the world around her. She is curious, detail oriented, compassionate, and knows how fortunate she is to have a good sense of humour. She is immensely grateful for the gift of writing.
Angela J. Gray (she/her) is an emerging Black writer and visual artist living in Vancouver, BC. She practices on the stolen lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Angela writes about the impact of colonization on children of the African/Caribbean Diaspora who have been adopted into white homes. Her work has appeared in Periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, the Red Cross National Bulletin – Black History Month, and The Capilano Review “From the Archives” newsletter. She is a Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient. Angela has also spoken on the Medicine for the Resistance podcast and has been a part of the Massy Arts Society–Voices Series. Angela is a graduate of Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, and a Creative and Culture Consultant/Facilitator. She is currently seeking a publisher for her memoir A Clean House.
Adishi Gupta (she/her) moved to Vancouver in 2021 to pursue her graduate studies at the University of British Columbia. She holds an advanced certification in Writing Lives from the University of Oxford. Her writing journey, spanning over a decade, includes creative nonfiction, poetry, and opinion pieces published in Feminism in India, Mad in Asia Pacific, and The Swaddle. Her writing has also appeared in three anthologies: The Side Effects of Living, DU Love, and After Dickens. She sporadically writes a Substack newsletter titled Tender Tales. She deeply loves life writing because of its magical power to make people feel seen and heard. When she’s not working, you will likely find her sky gazing or dreaming up her next collage.
Jean Kavanagh began her writing life as a reporter and for many years has worked in communications. She doesn’t consider herself a “real” writer, but tries now and again. Programs like Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio have helped.
Yong Nan Kim was born in Busan, Korea, and lived in Paraguay and Brazil in the 1970s and 80s. She then immigrated to the US and studied Spanish language & literature at the University of Virginia and Universidad de Valencia in Spain. She also holds a master’s degree in Iberian and Latin American Linguistics from the University of Texas. In 2001, she moved to Vancouver, BC, where she currently resides, and has worked as an interpreter, translator, and sessional lecturer at UBC and SFU. During her time in The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in 2019, she studied poetry and wrote My Year Without Books, a memoir about her childhood and adolescence in Paraguay and Brazil. An excerpt was published in the Emerge 19 TWS Anthology. The selected poems in Off the Map are excerpts from her current work in progress, a speculative memoir about her family’s silent history during the Russian and Japanese occupation of Korea and the Korean War. It examines intergenerational trauma as well as the author’s own experiences of mental illness. By weaving in dreams, memories of ancestors, ghost stories, and Korean folktales, Yong confronts a complex history and heritage by writing into their silence.
Justyna Krol is a writer and graphic designer from Lublin, Poland, now living on the traditional and unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver, BC. She spends her time writing, designing, and talking to crows. She hates mornings, loves sugar, and uses the latter to get through the former.
jerry LaFaery is a Generalist, playing and surviving in a variety of mediums including this one. Practising live-performance, within community and commercial work spaces. Living as a ‘Q’ member of the rainbow, and occupying space somewhere on the spectrum of fantasy to realityTM, appearing frequently on a land contestably referred to as Vancouver, Canada. From their POV, if the world has to be divided into two groups, then ‘Diagnosed and Undiagnosed’ might be a fun place to start.
Danica Longair (she/her) is a disabled mom and writer trying to crawl out from under her two young boys, tuxedo cat, and life-long depression to get her hands to her keyboard. She is a graduate/survivor of SFU’s The Writer’s Studio, 2020—The Pandemic Cohort. Her writing has appeared in Prairie Fire and The New Quarterly, the anthologies Sustenance and The Walls Between Us, and has been a finalist for contests with CANSCAIP, Room, PRISM International, and The Fiddlehead. She is currently working on a novel about stigma: imagining the eventual dystopian outcome of scapegoating the mentally ill for violence. Find out more about her at www.danicalongair.com.
Harry McKeown’s debut chapbook i need not be good was published in February 2022 by Rahila’s Ghost Press and shortlisted for the 2023 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Their poems are forthcoming or have appeared in SAD Mag, Poetry Magazine, Room, Peach Mag, Poetry is Dead, The Ex-Puritan, and Bad Nudes. They were awarded the George McWhirter Prize for Poetry in Winter 2020.
Neven Marelj is a poet, care and events worker. Their multi-genre work has appeared in places such as Room, Hatch Gallery, James Black Gallery, and Of Our Own Making (League of Canadian Poets 2024). They are the 2024 recipient of the George McWhirter Prize in Poetry. They think a lot about archives.
Based in East Vancouver, BC, Quin Martins is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who draws inspiration from his journey with mental health and substance use. Through humour, Quin likes to explore themes common to speculative fiction, such as questions of authorship in the digital age and the delicate balance between personal creativity and corporate influence. He holds a BFA in visual arts from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His non-fiction writing has appeared in SAD Mag.
Pari Mokradi (he/they) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose practice is deeply rooted in their lived experience as a South Asian settler on the unceded lands of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. A self-taught creator, Pari engages with the local community to explore themes of memory and mythology. Their recent accolades include the Sandy Cameron Memorial Award at the DTES Heart of the City Festival, First Prize in Visual Art from the Surrey Art Gallery, and the prestigious Aruna D’Souza Award from the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Their chapbook, DTES Watching, is forthcoming with Pinhole Poetry in Summer 2025. Connect with Pari on Instagram at @pari.mokradi or explore their work at www.paricreative.com
Ronan Nanning-Watson (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator who lives and works on unceded Coast Salish territory, AKA Vancouver, BC. They create imaginative portals to connect viewers to other worlds and dimensions that they have experienced through brain injuries and neurodivergence. Their work is grounded in the practical constraints of living with a disability in a rigged/brutal/beautiful world but always reaches for the sublime and transcendent. Their work connects and mutates across many genres and is always inseparable from self-accommodation, community building, learning, and healing.
Rye Orrange is a trans writer born and raised in “Vancouver, BC.” He has been using writing as a creative outlet and self-preservation tool since his childhood years. Rye’s work has been included in a variety of zines, anthologies, and digital magazines, often exploring topics of gender, mental health, and addiction. Rye hopes to one day live in a world free of stigma and criminalization for people who use substances, by any means possible.
Mary Phyllis O’Toole – I have a theory that when a group of people, whether Afro-American, LGBTQ, mentally ill people, etc., are oppressed, their way up is through asserting themselves through their culture, whether art, literature, or music. This is one of the reasons I write, not only for emotional catharsis, but to shine a light on schizophrenia.
Bruce Ray – My journey has been a long one. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was twenty one years old—now I am sixty. I am an artist and a poet. I have been a part of the collective Gallery Gachet for two decades. It is a community of those who have mental illness and also practice art. I have put on five solo shows and participated in various group events. I have self-published two chapbooks of poetry and a graphic novel. I had a book of cartoon stories published by Boxer Press in 2018 called I Threw a Brick through a Window. I think of myself as a survivor and not a victim. In disability there is hidden ability and in difficulty there is opportunity. I have lived through trauma and come to the other side. I believe that art and politics are linked in the expression and act of creation. I believe that we must struggle for justice and share stories—all those who bear the stigma of mental illness. As I educate myself on the business of art and I educate the public, it’s all a part of the process. I think that optimism and positivity are both necessities for our lives. To change with the times we must adapt. In this way, the outsider (as they call us) must be reunited with the community. We must offer our talents and contribute to society. In conclusion I would say that the only solution is empowerment and self-direction. I am not defined by my disease. This is the way I am because this is the way I was made.
Ingrid Rose – My writing has appeared most recently in Don’t Tell: Family Secrets, edited by Donna Sharkey and Arleen Paré, 2023. I’ve been teaching “writing from the body” online since 2019. I’m co-producer and co-host of writersradio.ca now in its 5th year. My memoir, re/membering :: essays & other stories will be out this fall, 2025.
Beth Rowntree lives in Vancouver. She is neurodiverse, and imprecisely diagnosed as living with schizophrenia and autism, or possibly with some other yet to be defined disorder. A psychiatrist once said her brain had “shrunk.” Perhaps her brain is down to its essence. Her writing has been published in Hidden Lives: true stories from people who live with mental illness, Geist Magazine, Exile Quarterly, Fig:ment Magazine, and The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English.
Lenore Rowntree lives in Vancouver. Her linked collection of stories See You Later Maybe Never (NON Press, 2022) is a humorous exploration of the dilemmas of aging. Her novel Cluck (Thistledown Press, 2016) is about Henry, an only child growing up with a mother who lives with bipolar disorder. Lenore is the lead editor and contributor to Hidden Lives: true stories from people who live with mental illness (Touchwood Editions, 2nd ed. 2017). Her poetry, short stories, and essays have been published in several anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, including Geist Magazine, Exile Quarterly, The New Quarterly, The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English, and The Globe & Mail.
Kim Seary is a Jessie Award–winning actress. As a writer/performer, she presented Madame Scotch-tape at the Montreal Fringe and at Women in View in Vancouver, and The Beautiful Thing, an original musical, for the Kickstart Festival. Other plays include Hot Flashes—on the Rocky Road to Redemption with Christine Willes at the Telus Stage of the Chan Centre, and Magdalena’s Monster for Origins Theatre Projects at Pacific Theatre. Kim’s stories include “Patricia” in My Mother’s Story anthology, and “I do” in the anthology Concussion: Not Just Another Head-line. Her poem “Window of Slow” was published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine. With Pandora’s Poetry Collective, Kim has read for events such as Twisted Poets and Poetic Pairings. She has also read her work at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio Reading Series. Kim has studied with teachers such as Heather Conn, Betsy Warland, Bonnie Nish, and Shauna Paull, and has hosted numerous writing circles. She was producer of The Bodacious Reading Series for Women Playwrights at Presentation House Theatre. Her poetry manuscript Beyond the Veil (working title), is currently in progress. Kim is a member of the Federation of BC Writers.
Seema Shah is a self-taught visual artist and writer living in Vancouver, BC, unceded Coast Salish Territory. Working mainly in the medium of collage, she frequently incorporates text into her artwork. Her creative nonfiction has been published in literary journals and anthologies, shortlisted for the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives’ Narrative Essay Contest and twice for the Surrey International Writers’ Conference Contest, and longlisted for the Susan Crean Award for Nonfiction 2023. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in Canada, the US, and the UK, and appeared in publications including SAD Magazine and Contemporary Collage Magazine. Seema was a recipient of The Beaumont Studios’ Artist To Watch Award 2022 and a highly commended artist in the 2022 & 2023 Contemporary Collage Magazine Awards. seemashahart.com
Neko Smart lives on xwməθkwəy̓əm land. They are a graduate of UBC’s BFA Creative Writing program. As 2020 Victoria City Youth Poet Laureate, they emphasised the importance of cultivating open dialogue about mental health in order to reduce stigma and increase safety. They’re a member of the Wordplay poetry workshop facilitation roster and the former slam coordinator for the UBC Slam Poetry Club. They were a finalist in the 2023 and 2024 Canadian Individual Poetry Slams.
Amy Wang is a Chinese-Canadian writer born and raised in Vancouver, BC. Their work has been published in Paper Shell, That’s What [We] Said, The Goose, and The Garden Statuary, and exhibited in IGNITE! Youth-Driven Arts Festival. They are currently an MFA student at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan).
Sandra Yuen is an artist, writer, and public speaker on recovery. After earning a Fine Arts Diploma from Langara College and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia in art history, she received the Courage to Come Back Award and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Under the pen name Sandra Yuen MacKay, she published My Schizophrenic Life: The Road to Recovery from Mental Illness (Bridgeross Communications, 2010), Chop Shtick (2016), and From New York to Vancouver: Stories on the Fly co-written with James D. Young (2018). She has published numerous mental health articles for magazines. Also she has a poetry book in the works titled I Want to Be Buried Standing Up. As an artist, she paints florals, house portraits, and abstracts using acrylics and oils. She enjoys playing drums for Beautiful Lizards. She has lived experience of mental illness, residing in Vancouver BC.
