WRITERS ON TOUR

Mingus Tourette was born and raised in western Canada, and has been obsessed with writing and literature from an early age. Since 1999, he has been published regularly online and is now the writer / editor of The Daily Mingus. He is also the author of the controversial Nunt (Zygote Publishing, 2004) and the ringmaster of this rolling circus.

Rita Bouvier - "Language is music, trees sing and history/memory leaps and lingers just around the corner. Listen. Observe. Through speaking and writing, movement, and dreaming, words come to give expression to ordinary, and not so ordinary moments of consciousness. Run, listen to the rhythmic sound of your breathing, read, reflect, dream, dance, recite, and then write, and write again!"

Born in Scarborough, Ontario, Patrick Carroll has been acquainted with many places across Canada. He has self-published five poetry chapbooks and is currently producing a second edition of his most recent collection, "Anyplace Beyond Ourselves," (2003 KAW Publications) a full-colour collection of poems and photographs mapping the internal and external landscapes of a nation and one of its residents. He now lives in Winnipeg.

Jordan Fry is a poet, publisher and editor from Niagara Falls. Under the Cubicle Press banner, he has self published over six chapbooks of poetry and several broadsides, as well as an elite group of poets and novelists in rob mclennan, Richard Stevenson, Tanis Rideout and JJ Steinfeld. He is the managing editor of the relatively new, Grey Borders magazine. In his spare time he hosts literary readings in the Niagara region. You can contact him editors@greyborders.com

Mike Gravel lives, loves, and gets laid in Edmonton, Alberta. He’s a founding father of the Raving Poets (www.ravingpoets.com) movement in that city, and kicks out his poetry any chance he can get, to whoever will listen. He publishes and edits a regular 'zine (www.dirtpuppy.com), he’s got a foul tongue, a love of the beautiful, and a strange fascination with platypuses (don’t ask).

Kate MacNeill dropped out of high school at 16 and moved to a hippie-filled house in Winnipeg. For a year, she starved, batted her eyelashes for free coffee, didn't talk to anyone and wrote. She moved home to finish high school and pretend to be a Wal-Mart cashier. She has spent the time since then travelling, dancing til dawn, having rampant love affairs, bleaching her hair instead of shaving it off, and trying to convince everyone she meets to start writing, quit their crappy jobs and join the revolution.

Tanis Rideout was born in Belgium and grew up in Bermuda and Canada. Last winter she published Velocity her first chapbook of poems detailing a friend’s devastating car accident. More recently her attention has turned to comic books and superheroes – like her they are all writers, photographers and actors. Like them Rideout can kick your ass – but only to serve the greater good. www.geocities.com/tanis_rideout

Resonating from Regina Saskatchewan, Tara Solheim explores language, poetry and song. She has spoken words in many contexts including performing her lyrics at the Farrago Poetry Circuit in London, England, strutting through Regina’s streets as a singing and dancing pelican and many performance poetry circumstances throughout Canada. Currently her energy is flowing into a melodic spoken word sound recording based on the adventures of WonderWalker.

Glen Sorestad is a well known Saskatchewan poet who has published over a dozen poetry volumes; his work has appeared in over 40 anthologies and textbooks. In 2000 he became Saskatchewan's first Poet Laureate, the first provincially appointed poet laureate in Canada. He is a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets and in 2003 he received the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal.

ct staples lives everywhere and claims to be everyone. he makes messes of all mediums. notable accomplishments include: timelimited infamy for his punkanarchonihilistic dadanarcamutations, winning a poetry competition in fourth grade, patenting the canopener/alarmclock. when he is not studying mail order medicine, or suffering thru rehab, he is known to work with Pregnant Embryo Productions , in Victoria, BC.