Colin Christopher Stuart was a Canadian poet closely associated with the West Coast poetry movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the 'New American Poetry' anthologized by Donald Allen.
A shy and withdrawn child prodigy, Colin was one of the five children of W.M.P. (Manfred) Stuart and Bessie Dolina Stuart (nee Macaulay). He grew up in Vancouver and Burnaby, composing poetry and playing the bagpipes in the Vancouver Kiwanis Boys Pipe Band, with which he competed at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival.

He attended Simon Fraser University at an early age, was present at the 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference and graduated from SFU with a degree in English literature. He began a graduate degree at SFU, which he did not complete, but was awarded a Canada Council grant for further studies in poetics and for a time did graduate work in Buffalo, N.Y. In 1974 he attended the British School of Classical Studies in Athens.

His early writing was published in numerous Canadian and American poetry magazines of the 1960s and early 1970s, including TISH, Talon, Capilano Review, Pacific Nation, Skree, Iron, Writing (George Straight Writing Supplement), Fathar (Bolinas), and Boundary 2 (Buffalo). His critical and poetic work responded to a number of influences: Black Mountain poetics, Post-structuralist philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, English romanticism, French symbolism, and Islamic religious writings. In addition to Blaser’s mentorship, Stuart’s work was supported by broad community of artists and writers: Laura Baird, John “Jack” Clarke, Pierre Coupey, Susan Knutson, and Duncan McNaughton.
By the mid/late 1970s he seemed poised to establish himself as a leading younger Canadian poet but suffered setbacks in his personal life, including a falling-out with his one-time mentor and SFU graduate supervisor, the poet Robin Blaser. He halted the volume of his poems Talonbooks was preparing for publication in the early 1980s, and in later years became isolated from former friends and colleagues, suffering from mental and physical health issues, addiction, brushes with the law, and homelessness on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Though he continued to write, he avoided any further publication in his lifetime. He died in Vancouver's West End in 2018 at the age of 69, leaving a large archive of his life's work - manuscripts composed over a period of fifty years.

Koozma J. Tarasoff was born in Saskatoon. He is a writer and scholar creating works related to Doukhobor history and culture.

Alan Twigg was born in North Vancouver, British Columbia in 1952. Since 1987, he has owned and published the newspaper, B.C. BookWorld, Canada’s largest circulation publication about books. In 1985, Twigg co-founded the B.C. Book Prizes, and he was its executive director and
chief fundraiser in the 1990s. He also created the Van City Women’s Book Prize, and coordinated it between 1992 and 2005. Twigg was a representative of the Writers Union of Canada, on the original Board of Directors for the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University. He also served on the boards of the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Committee and the Vancouver Cultural Alliance. He is a founder of British Columbia’s annual Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in British Columbia, which he has also coordinated since 1995. In 1994, he organized events aiming to honor George Woodcock, who was British Columbia’s most prolific man of letters.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Alan Twigg worked as a freelance writer. From 1995 to 1998, he wrote a weekly editorial column for The Province newspaper. He has written for The Quill & Quire, BC Historical News, as a theatre critic for The Georgia Straight, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Maclean’s, Vancouver Sun, Step and Pacific Northwest Review of Books. Alan Twigg appears frequently as a guest on CBC Radio, and he has been the host of a CBC television series about B.C. authors.

Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) was founded in 1975, in New Denver, British Columbia; it achieved park status for what is now Valhalla Provincial Park in 1983. VWS went on to successfully spearhead campaigns for the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, Goat Range Provincial Park, and the Spirit Bear Conservancies on Princess Royal Island. VWS also played one of the key roles in the protection of South Moresby National Park Reserve (Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve on Haida Gwaii). Its Endangered Wilderness Map of 1988 helped to spark the movement to double BC’s park system to 12% of the province. Valhalla has led park campaigns for over 560,000 hectares of now protected land.

Eleanor Wachtel, CM is a Canadian writer and broadcaster. For over thirty years she hosted the weekly literary show Writers and Company on CBC Radio One. She was born and raised in Montreal, where she took a B.A. in English literature at McGill University. Wachtel lived for a time in the United States and Kenya, and then in the mid-'70s worked as a freelance writer and broadcaster in Vancouver. She has co-edited two books: The Expo Story (1986), and Language in Her Eye (1990), and is the co-author of A Feminist Guide to the Canadian Constitution (1992). In 1993, Knopf Canada published a selection of interviews called Writers and Company; More Writers and Company was published in the fall of 1996. In spring 2003, HarperCollins brought out another selection, Original Minds. Wachtel is a contributor to the best-seller, Dropped Threads (2001), co-edited by Carol Shields, and Lost Classics (2000), co-edited by Michael Ondaatje et al. In 2007, she published Random Illuminations: Conversations With Carol Shields. For five years she was Adjunct Professor of Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University. In the fall of 1987, Wachtel moved to Toronto to work full-time as Literary Commentator on CBC Stereo's State of the Arts, and then as writer-broadcaster for The Arts Tonight, and Toronto reporter for The Arts Report. She was host of The Arts Tonight from 1996 to 2007, and has been host of CBC Radio's Writers & Company since its inception in 1990. In 1995 and again in 2003, Writers & Company won the CBC Award for Programming Excellence for the best weekly show broadcast nationally In 2002, Eleanor Wachtel was named winner of the Jack Award for the promotion of Canadian books. Wachtel has received six honorary degrees. In 2005, Wachtel was named a member of the Order of Canada.

Fred Wah (born January 23, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, and scholar involved in the post-modern literary scene in Canada, both as teacher and writer. He was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, but raised in the interior of British Columbia. His father was a Canadian-born but raised in China, who was born to a Chinese father and an English mother, while his mother a Swedish-born Canadian who came to Canada at age 6. His diverse ethnic makeup figures significantly in his writings. In 1962, Wah married Pauline Butling, a teacher, writer, and literary critic. Wah studied Music and English at the University of British Columbia (BA 1963), did some graduate work in English Literature at the University of New Mexico from 1963-1964, and completed an MA in English at the State University of New York Buffalo in 1967.

Wah is primarily known as a poet and has published numerous books of poetry, including “Lardeau” (1965), “Breathin' My Name with a Sigh” (1981); “Waiting for Saskatchewan” (1985), winner of the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, “Music at the Heart of Thinking” (1987); “Alley Alley Homefree” (1992); and “is a door” (2009), winner of the Dorothy Livesay Prize for Poetry. He is the author of the bio-fiction “Diamond Grill” (1996), winner of the Howard O'Hagan prize for short fiction. He has also written many works of nonfiction. His collection of critical essays “Faking it: Poetics and Hybridity” (2000), winner of the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Criticism, represents fifteen years of his writings in various forms.

Wah has worked as an instructor of English composition and literature at various academic institutions. From 1967-1989, he taught writing at Selkirk College in Castlegar, British Columbia, while living in South Slocan. He also taught at David Thompson University Centre in Nelson, British Columbia, until the school’s closing in 1984. When the David Thompson University Centre closed in 1984, Wah was involved in establishing the Kootenay School of Writing in its place, and from 1995-1999, Wah served as an electronic writing advisor for the Kootenay School of Art. In 1989, he was appointed professor of English at the University of Calgary, a position he held until 2003, when he retired and became professor emeritus. He taught courses in English composition and literature. In 1995, Wah taught a graduate seminar on bpNichol’s “The Martyrology” at the University of Calgary in conjunction with Roy Miki, who taught a section of the same seminar at Simon Fraser University.

Wah has also worked extensively as an editor, both for literary periodicals, and as editor for the poetry manuscripts of friends, colleagues, and peers. While at the University of British Columbia, he was a founding editor and contributor to the poetry newsletter “TISH,” and served as Associate Editor from 1961 to 1963. Well known for his work on literary journals and small-press, Wah has been a contributing editor to the journal “Open Letter” since its beginning in 1970, involved in the editing of “West Coast Line,” and, along with Frank Davey, he co-edited the world's first online literary magazine, SwiftCurrent in 1986. From 1992-1993, he was part of the editorial collective of “Appropriate Voice,” the newsletter for the Racial Minorities Committee of the Writers’ Union of Canada, and also worked to organize a conference of the same name held in May 1992 in Orilla, Ontario. From 2003 to 2008 Wah served as poetry editor for “The Literary Review of Canada.”

Wah has been a member of various committees, both academic and non-academic. At the University of Calgary, he served on the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Authors Programme Steering Committee 1993-1994, 1996-1997, and 2000-2001. A long-time member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, Wah served on the National Council Executive from 1996-1997, on the National Executive from 2000-2001, and was Chair of the Union from 2001-2002. From 1990-1994, he served on the Racial Minorities Committee of the union.

Wah served as the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada from 2012-2013, and in 2013 was appointed to the Order of Canada.

The Women in View festival began in 1986 when Jane Heyman, along with Sue Astley, Sharon Bakker, Patricia Ludwick and Suzie Payne created View, the Performing Arts Society, a non-profit organization. The purpose of the organization included promoting the artistic growth of women involved in the performing arts; to provide increased opportunity for women in the performing arts and to encourage the participation of women from diverse cultural background. Between 1986 and 1988, View organized workshops, lectures, and networking sessions for women in the arts in Vancouver. From the beginning, the goal of the organization was to create a festival.
The first Women in View festival was held in Vancouver in 1989, and was a multidisciplinary arts festival showcasing work initiated by women. Over the following 10 years, until 1998, the festival was successful at providing opportunities for over 1,500 women in the performing arts from across Canada and around the world. Following the 10th festival, the board of Women in View faced a deficit of $20,000 and the resignation of 2 key organizers. Unable to gain funding for the 1999 festival, the board decided to cancel the eleventh festival and dissolve View at its annual general meeting in 1999. Women in View’s few assets, and its work, were taken over by La Luna Productions, a collective of professional women artists of colour.