Meet the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize readers

Readers are an integral part ofCBC Literary Prizes. Every year,CBC Booksenlists the help of established writers and editors from across Canada to read the thousands of entries submitted to our prizes.These readers compile the longlists, which is handed over to the jury.The jurythen selects theshortlistand the eventual winner from the readers' longlisted selections.

Below are the 12 poets who served as readers for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize.

You can see the longlist for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize here. The shortlist will be revealed on Nov. 7, 2018.

Thejury for the 2018CBCPoetry Prizeis composed of Jordan Abel, Kai Cheng Thom and Ruth B.

The winner of the 2018CBCPoetry Prizewill receive $6,000 from theCanada Council for the Arts, have their poem published onCBCBooksand attend a writing residency attheBanff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Four finalists will each receive $1,000 from theCanada Council for the Artsand have their story published onCBCBooks.

Larissa Andrusyshyn

Larissa Andrusyshyn's first book Mammoth(DC Books 2010) was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize and the Kobzar Literary Award. Her second poetry collection Proofwas published by DC Books. She is currently completing a new poetry manuscript and a novel. Her poems have been shortlisted for Arc Magazine's Poem of the Year, the 3Macs Carte Blanche Prize and the Malahat Review's Open Season Award. She works with a local non-profit facilitating creative writing workshops for at-risk youth. She lives, writes and is planning her zombie apocalypse survival strategy in Montreal.

Tim Bowling

Tim Bowling is a poet, novelistand non-fiction writer with 20 published books to his credit. His work has received many honours, including two Governor General's Literary Award nominations in poetry, five Alberta Book Awardsand a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Raised at the mouth of the Fraser River, where he worked as a salmon fisherman for many years, he now lives in Edmonton.

Tanis Franco

Tanis Franco is a poet and archivist from Toronto. Their debut poetry collection, Quarry, was published by the University of Calgary Press in January 2018. Their work has appeared most recently in Lemon Hound and in the anthology Best American Experimental Writing 2018. Franco is currently working on a second poetry collection.

Whitney French

Whitney French is a writer, storyteller and arts-educator. Her writing has been published in Quill and Quire, Geist, Descant Magazine, CBC Books and anthologized in The Black Notes: Fresh Writing From Black Women and Girls (2017) and The Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry (2010). Whitney also the founder and co-editor of the nation-wide publication From the Root Zine as well as the founder of the workshop series Writing While Black: an initiative to develop a community of black writers. Presently Whitney is curating an anthology around the narratives of Black Canadians through the University of Regina Press slated for publication February 2019.

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Gerald Hill

Two-time winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry, Gerald Hill published his sixth poetry collection, Hillsdale Book, with NeWest Press, and A Round For Fifty Years: A History of Regina's Globe Theatre with Coteau Books, both in 2015. He was the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence at Fool's Paradise in Toronto in 2015 and Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan in 2016. He lives and writes in Regina.

Richard Lemm

Richard Lemm has taught literature and creative writing at the University of Prince Edward Island since 1988. He has published six poetry collections, most recently Jeopardy in 2018. His short fiction collection, Shape of Things to Come, won a PEI Book Award. His biography Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger received a PEI Heritage Foundation Award. He edited Riptides: New PEI Fiction, an Atlantic Book Awards finalist for Best Atlantic Canadian Published Book, and winner of a PEI Book Award. He also edited Snow Softly Falling: Holiday Stories from Prince Edward Island. He is a member of the PEI Writers' Guild and The Writers' Union of Canada, and hosts the UPEI Winter's Tales Author Reading Series, the only annual reading series in PEI.

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Canisia Lubrin

Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor, teacher and critic, with work published widely in North America, forthcoming in the U.K., and her poems' translations include into Spanish. She is the author of the awards-nominated poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis (Buckrider Books, 2017) and augur (Gap Riot Press, 2017) finalist for the 2018 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Lubrin's fiction is anthologized in The Unpublished City: Volume I, finalist for the 2018 Toronto Book Award. She teaches writing at Humber College and University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies.

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CassidyMcFadzean

Cassidy McFadzean was born in Regina, Saskatchewan and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 2015, she published Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second collection Drolleries will be published by McClelland & Stewart in March 2019. She lives in Toronto.

Janet Rogers

Janet Rogers is a Mohawk/Tuscarora poet, media producer and radio host from Six Nations territory. Her sixth poetry collection As Long As the Sun Shines, released in September 2018 with Bookland Press, will also be published in the Mohawk language in 2019. Rogers is the current University of Alberta Writer in Residence 2018/19. Future book projects include The New Legends of Vancouver, inspired by the original Legends of Vancouver by Mohawk author E. Pauline Johnson as told to her by Chief Joe Capilano and Mary Agnus.

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Dane Swan

Dane Swan is a Bermuda born and Toronto based author and emerging editor. He is the author of four books, including, A Mingus Lullaby,which was a finalist for the 2017 Trillium Book Prize for Poetry. Currently, Dane is co-editing the Best New Poets in Canada,anthology (launching Feb 2019) for Quattro Books and is the lone editor of an anthology for Guernica Editions, celebrating diverse voices in Canada's literary community (launching Spring 2020).

Zachariah Wells

Zachariah Wells is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Sum (Biblioasis, 2015), and a collection of critical essays, Career Limiting Moves (Biblioasis, 2013). He has also done editorial work for a number of Canadian magazines and publishers. Originally from PEI, he lives in Halifax, where he works aboard Via Rail's train The Ocean and serves as Chief Shop Steward for Via's onboard staff in Unifor Local 4005.

Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead is a Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, Ojibwe-Cree (nehiyaw) otcimow from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017) and Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018) which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for a Governor General's Fiction Award.

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