Olivia Abram is a settler doctoral student in the English department at the University of Saskatchewan whose research focuses on ethical reading practices in Indigenous literatures and Indigenous-settler relations. Her dissertation examines and develops strategies for ethical settler listening, reading, and viewing of Indigenous works of Turtle Island in academic, educational, and public spheres. Through her work, she explores the potential value found in slow, humble, and self-reflective engagement with works in which the reader is not the primary audience, highlighting the importance of self-location and relational reading.
Read Abram’s essay here.
Sonya Ballantyne is a Swampy Cree writer, filmmaker, and speaker from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work focuses on contemporary and futuristic portrayals of Indigenous women and girls. Her published works include children’s book Kerri Berry Lynn as well as contributions to anthologies such as Pros and Comic Cons and Women Love Wrestling. She has also written for television, such as Paul Rabliauskas' Acting Good and the Scott Brothers Entertainment's Builder Bros Dream Factory. She is currently working on her first feature film, a graphic novel memoir, and the forthcoming game The Walking Dead: Last MILE.
Read Ballantyne’s perspective piece here.
Sadie Barker (she/her) was born and raised on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ land, is a PhD candidate in the department of English at Concordia University, and the co-editor/co-founder at Refractions. Her research clusters around postcolonial studies and popular culture, genealogies of subjectivity and structures of feeling, landscape, anticolonial creative production, aesthetics, and theories of genre. She loves taking photos, television, music, and roaming.
Read or listen to our Letter from the Editor.
Read Sadie’s interview with Sadie Couture and Daisy Couture here.
Born in 1992, Kaia’tanó:ron Dumoulin Bush (she/her) is an Onkwehonwe/French-Canadian illustrator and visual artist from Oshahrhè:'on* (Chateauguay), Quebec. In December 2018, she graduated from OCAD University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Indigenous Visual Culture. She has previously obtained DECs in Fine Arts and Illustration & Design at Montreal’s Dawson College. Since 2012, Kaia’tanó:ron has been serving Kahnawake as an arts educator while maintaining and growing her arts practices.
Read Bush’s Notes from the Field here.
Daisy Couture is a medical anthropologist who was born and raised on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ land. She has a BA in English Literature and Psychology from the University of British Columbia and is currently an MA student in the Department of Anthropology and Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University (Tiohti:áke/Montreal) where her work focuses on psychiatry, medically unexplained symptoms, and uncertainty in medicine.
Read our interview with Daisy Couture and Sadie Couture here.
Sadie Couture (she/her) is a media historian and a digital media artist, producer, and educator. Sadie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. sadie.couture@mail.mcgill.ca
Read our interview with Sadie Couture and Daisy Couture here.
Cornelius Fortune’s work has appeared in Yahoo News, CinemaBlend, The Advocate, The Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, Midwest Living, St. John’s University Humanities Review, The Journal of American Culture, and others. He holds an MA in English Literature and has taught composition, technical writing, as well as poetry and drama at Jackson College. Before going into education, he served as managing editor of the Michigan Chronicle –– the state’s oldest weekly black newspaper –– and senior editor of BLAC Detroit magazine. He is currently a PhD candidate in American Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University.
Read Fortune’s perspective piece here. Read his book review here.
Lorenz A. Hindrichsen is a cultural critic working on intersectionality from the Middle Ages to the Romantic period, pandemic literature, trauma theory, ecocriticism, and the graphic novel. Lorenz studied at Zurich and Aberdeen University, writing his MA thesis on social codes in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and his PhD on representations of ethnicity and race in Shakespeare and Renaissance art. He teaches English and Theory of Knowledge at Copenhagen International School.
Read Hindrichsen’s essay here.
Lzz Johnk is queer, Mad, agender writer and an independent scholar from Michigan. Their areas of research include Mad Studies, Disability Studies, Queer Studies, women of colour feminisms, decoloniality, and abolition. More of their work can be found in Feral Feminisms, International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, and Ethnic Studies Review. They received their PhD in Spring 2021 from Oregon State University, where they also cofounded the OSU Disability Archives. They were a visiting professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Grand Valley State University during the 2021-22 academic year.
Read Johnk’s book review here.
Priscilla Jolly is a PhD candidate at Concordia University. She co-founded and co-edits Refractions. Her research interests include speculative fiction, tropes of placemaking, environmental humanities and postcolonial studies. Can talk about movies, TV and houseplants.
Feisal Kirumira is the Public Safety Lead, Antiracism Program, Community Services, City of Calgary. Feisal’s training as Adjunct Professor of German/ Humanities Studies coupled with decade-long experience as Faculty Lead, Diversity Working Group in university settings honed his unique skill set as a community broker for sustainable antiracist public safety initiatives. Born and raised in Uganda, Feisal studied and worked in Europe for 13 years before migrating to Canada in 2005 where Calgarians welcomed him and his family as their own. He has lived, studied, and taught diversity, inclusion and antiracism in Germany and Canada. This unique educational, work and lived experiential background equipped Feisal with strategic thinking, leadership and negotiation skills, exceptional cross-cultural communications, case management and advisory experience. Feisal served as Vice-Chair of the City of Edmonton Antiracism Committee and member of the Government of Alberta Antiracism Advisory Council. Feisal has a proven record of building relationships with stakeholders at all levels and catalyzing respectful, inclusive, results-oriented antiracist projects to address public safety concerns arising from systemic exclusion in multi-racial workplace and community environments. Feisal is currently pursuing a PhD in Secondary Education at the University of Alberta with a focus on building capacities for anti-racism education using an Afrocentric lens.
Read Kirumira’s Notes from the Field here.
Erin Konsmo (they/them/she/her) is a Prairie queer of Métis and settler Canadian descent. They grew up in central Alberta and are a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. Erin’s arts practice currently focuses on fish scale art; a discipline that they were mentored into by Métis artist Jaime Morse. Using macro photography and digital art, Erin seeks to magnify the gifts from the fish by taking small-in-scale gifts and digitally scaling them up in size.They enjoy spending time ice fishing, processing the gifts from the fish and sharing the glamour and iridescence of fish scales. In spring and summer, Erin enjoys listening to frog songs, picking medicines, and canoeing to visit beavers. Erin is also a textile artist, taking inspiration from her mothers sewing room and loves a good perusal through drawers full of fabric, rick rack, trims and lace.
Read Konsmo’s Notes from the Field here.
Walter Lucken IV (he/him/his) is a PhD candidate in English at Wayne State University, where he teaches rhetoric and writing with the Center for Latino/a and Latin American studies. His research charts abolitionist horizons in public rhetoric, community writing, and the teaching of writing. In addition to his work at Wayne State, he co-facilitates the Writer's Block creative writing workshop at the Macomb Men's Correctional Facility, serves on the MLA's Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities, and is Co-Chair of the Graduate Student Standing Group at this year's Conference on College Composition and Communication. His writing appears in Michigan Quarterly Review, Community Literacy Journal, ROAR, Freedom Arts Journal, Runner, and Refractions Journal. At present, he is starting work on Cavern of Fear: On Rhetorics of Abolition, a book manuscript which explores the potential for abolitionist projects in public rhetoric. He lives in Waawiyatanong (Detroit).
Read Lucken’s essay here.
Lindsey Palmer is an MA student in English at the University of Toronto and holds a BA in English Literature and Political Science from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include postcolonial theory, critical refugee studies, and environmental humanities incorporating climate justice perspectives.
Read Palmer’s essay here.
Lisu Wang studied English in China and American literature in the US, and further received doctoral training in nineteenth-century English literature in the UK. Broadly speaking, she is interested in discovering the 'otherness' in Victorian female authors' travel writings. So far much of her work has been performed on understanding the foreign materials as a function of narrative in Elizabeth Gaskell’s works, which leads to building a map of her mental mobility.
Read Wang’s essay here.