CREATIVITY FROM THE STACKS

Nicholas Nanos, musician, composer and fiction author, has performed at The Mariposa Folk Festival, sung with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and was artistic director and composer for the 2015 Unexpectedly Opera performance.

Nishe Catherine, a recently retired psychotherapist, is a poet and writer of short stories and creative non-fiction. She has had poetry published in four literary anthologies and magazines. Nishe is currently working on the third draft of a biography of her mother's life. Her story, 'Selena,' was recently shortlisted in The Malahat Review's creative non-fiction contest.

Sharon A. Crawford, a former journalist, writes mystery fiction and memoir, and teaches memoir and fiction writing. She belongs to Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, the Toronto Heliconian Club and runs the East End Writers’ Group. The third book in her Beyond mystery series, Beyond Faith, will be published by Blue Denim Press in fall 2017.

Shane Joseph is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and the author of four novels and three collections of short stories. His work After the Flood won the best fantasy novel award at Write Canada in 2010. His short fiction has appeared in international literary journals and anthologies. His collection of short stories, Crossing Limbo, will be released in June 2017.

A former teacher and librarian, Gail M. Murray has turned her talents to writing. Her poems have been published in Blank Spaces, Wordscape, Arborealis and on CommuterLit.com. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Trellis, Heartbeats, Renaissance, NOW Magazine, Blank Spaces, The Ottawa Review of Books, Our Canada and More of Our Canada.

A former journalist and media studies researcher, Lee Parpart returned to poetry and short fiction in 2015. She won an emerging writer award in Open Book: Ontario's 2016 "What's Your Story?" competition, and has published eight poems and short stories with Silver Birch Press. Her latest short story, "Nancy drew," appeared in Silver Birch's 2016 Nancy Drew Anthology.

Paola Ferrante is a Toronto based writer and teacher who majored in creative writing at York University. Her poetry has previously appeared in Tart and both her poetry and fiction are forthcoming in Minola Review. Her current projects include writing a book length series of poems which explore issues of gender and trauma through the lenses of fairy tales and psychological theory, writing that first novel, conquering rock walls and making lots and lots of craft beer.

Documentary photographer and freelance writer Laura Jones has turned to memoir combined with personal photographs. She has written for PhotoEd, Canadian Family, and Canadian Health. Her photographs are in collections of the Smithsonian National African American Museum of History and Culture and the National Gallery of Canada. She is a member of Women in Photography International, the Toronto Arts & Letters Club, and the Photographic Historical Society of Canada.

Georgiana Petec is a stay-at-home mom teaching Zumba for the City of Toronto in the evenings. Writing has been a passion since early childhood. She first wrote in Romanian, then French, and now concentrates on short stories in English. With many writing courses under her belt, she has won a few small poetry and flash fiction competitions, but is still working towards her first big publication.