fall 2014
Poster by Tiaré Jung.
jillian christmas
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antonette rea
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Jillian Christmas serves as Artistic Director of Versəs Festival of Words. She has won Grand Poetry-Slam Championship titles at both the Vancouver BedRocc poetry-slam (2011), as well as the Vancouver Poetry Slam (2012, 2014), and has represented Vancouver at the Women of the World Poetry Slam for the past two years. An enthusiastic organizer within the Canadian poetry community, Jillian has participated in, developed and executed programs in partnership with Toronto Poetry Project, Wordplay, Brendan McLeod’s Travelling Slam and the CULTCH Mentorship, and facilitated spoken word workshops for youth and adults across the country.
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Antonette Rea is a local poet who has shared her work in various literary magazines, chap books and performance poetry. She recently was the subject of a short film “A Woman with a Past” currently on the international film fest circuit and is currently working on a play based on a collection of her poetry about her life’s challenges as a transgender woman.
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ben keane-o'hara
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Tiaré jung
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Ben Keane-O’Hara has grown up and surrounded himself with writers. He’s finally coming to a place of holding that space for himself. He moves towards stories of unknown mixed and poc ancestry, trans and queer identities, and the way light catches on the curve of a belly. He is at once afraid of and in love with the ocean.
amber dawn
Amber Dawn is a local writer. Her memoir How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir won the 2013 Vancouver Book Award. She is the author of the Lambda Award-winning novel Sub Rosa, and editor of the anthologies Fist of the Spider Women: Fear and Queer Desire and With A Rough Tongue.
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Tiaré (tee-ah-ray) Jung is a survivor, queerdo, love slut, mixed brown kid with ties to their Polynesian roots. They make art for pay, play, and survival. Songster. Poet. Memoirist. Poster designer. They facilitated leadership storytelling at CampOUT and took part in queer writing spaces, “Writing Ourselves Alive,” and “Telling it Bent.” They are new to sharing their care-chosen-words. They have an appetite for undertold stories, and want to tell you some of theirs…
vanessa shanti fernando
Vanessa Shanti Fernando identifies as a queer, mixed-race femme dandy. She is studying to become a social worker, but will always be a writer first. She believes in the power of romance and rootedness.
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