The Path to Publication

with Chelene Knight, Pamela Mulloy, Russell Smith, and Brent van Staalduinen

CHELENE KNIGHT is the author of the Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award, and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American literary journals, plus the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, and the Toronto Star. Her work is anthologized in Making Room, Love Me True, Sustenance, The Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award.

The Toronto Star called Knight, “one of the storytellers we need most right now.” Knight was the previous managing editor at Room magazine, and the previous festival director for the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver. She is now CEO of her own literary studio, Breathing Space Creative and she works as an associate literary agent with Transatlantic Agency. Chelene often gives talks about home, belonging and belief, inclusivity, and community building through authentic storytelling. Chelene teaches part time at the University of Toronto.

PAMELA MULLOY is the editor of The New Quarterly and the creative director of the Wild Writers Literary Festival. She is also a writer with short fiction published in the UK and Canada. Her debut novel The Deserters was published by Véhicule Press in 2018.

RUSSELL SMITH’S most recent book, Confidence, was longlisted for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize. His English translation of Nadine Bismuth’s award-winning novel Un Lien Familial has just been published by House of Anansi. He is now working as an acquiring editor at Dundurn Press. His techno dance mixes can be found on Mixcloud under the name DJ Roomtone.

BRENT VAN STAALDUINEN is an award-winning writer from Hamilton. He is the author of the novels BOY, the forthcoming NOTHING BUT LIFE, and SAINTS, UNEXPECTED, as well as the forthcoming short fiction collection CUT ROAD. His stories have won the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Lush Triumphant Literary Award, and the Fiddlehead Fiction Award, and have appeared in The Sycamore Review, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Event, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. A recovering high school English teacher, tree planter, army medic, and radio announcer, Brent now finds himself working for the Hamilton Public Library and helping other writers find their voice.