Amanda Lou
featured work: How Anger Comes
Amanda Lou (any/all pronouns) is a 25-year-old Sagittarius and a metal dragon in the Chinese zodiac. Born and raised in the prairies of Canada, she hates parking to the point where she would rather take transit anywhere. They also hope whoever is reading this will remember to straighten their back.
Ashley J.J. White
featured work: The Kids Are Alright
Ashley J.J. White is a Calgary, Canada-based arts advocate, community builder, and writer who cares deeply about social justice and human rights. Her work has been published in Shadow & Sax, After Dinner Conversation, Berkeley Fiction Review, and Paddler Press, among others. She loves to read and write about social issues, philosophy, and relationships, and is deeply inspired by the natural world. Find her online @ashleyjjwhite.ca
Breanne Lynsey
featured work: The Pantry
Breanne Lynsey is an undergraduate student at the University of Alberta with a major in English and a minor in Creative Writing in the Faculty of Arts. Her work covers a wide array of topics and themes, with her inspiration drawn from personal experience as a queer person as well as social, political, and economic issues. Aside from writing or reading, you can find her playing card games, snuggling with her cats, or performing as a member of Edmonton’s Spoken Word Choir.
Cait Yaga
featured work: The Feminine Curse
Cait Yaga (she/her) is an author, poet, editor, and avid reader who unapologetically explores themes of resilience, agency, power, and morality. Her stories are gritty, unflinching, and propulsive, as is her commitment to her craft, and her writing has a tasteful creep factor that will chill your blood long after you’ve put it down. She has been published in two anthologies, with two more releasing in late 2026. She lives in Strathcona County with her long-term boyfriend and (her) long-haired tuxedo cat, Sushi. Yaga is currently working on her fourth novel.
Charlotte A. Waniandy
featured work: Animalistic Tendencies
Charlotte A. Waniandy is a student and emerging arts professional with a focus on literary arts, research, and community engagement. Her writing draws on lived experience, using raw, vivid imagery to capture complex emotions and moments of reflection.
Cheyanna Young
Cheyanna Young is a third-year Professional Communications student at MacEwan University with a minor in Journalism. Her writing often explores identity, personal experience, and the ways people learn to understand themselves over time. After being recently diagnosed with ADHD, she began reflecting on how growing up without that understanding shaped much of her life and perspective. Through her work, she hopes to create space for stories and minds that are often misunderstood.
Jon Lai
featured works: Derelict Politics, BREAD CRIMES
Jon Lai (he/him) is a researcher, writer, and lifelong resident of Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He holds a BA with a major in Sociology and an MSc in Human Ecology with a specialization in Aging from the University of Alberta. His previous poems have been published in Happiness Reflected Vols. 1 & 4, Boyle McCauley News, NorthWord Literary Magazine, and Capital City Press Anthology Vols. 4 & 5. Jon believes everyone has creative abilities.
Katie Young
featured work: No Say
Katie Young is a third-year student at MacEwan University. With an English major and Creative Writing minor, she hopes to enter the world of storytelling—via the realms of editing, publishing, and maybe even screenwriting (if she can get the knack of it!). She loves stories that use horror as a way to speak on socio-political issues–especially when they center women!
Kyra Droog
featured work: Illusion
Kyra Droog (she/her) is a writer, editor, podcaster, fundraiser, and storyteller living on Treaty Six territory in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton). Her list of publications spans short and book-length non-fiction, as well as short stories and poetry. She is the proud host of Sleuth Studies: The Hardy Boys Podcast.
Nightflame
featured works: manifesto, eidolon
My name is Talen, or my experimental alias is Nightflame. I am in my fourth-year in my bachelor's as an English major and a Creative Writing minor. Ironically, I never liked books as I grew up, but once I got my hands on Edgar A. Poe, Octavia Butler, Stephen King, and H.P Lovecraft, I gravitated to SF, science fantasy, romance, and horror genres. I hope that in the near future, I can write stories and lore for video game companies, as well as publish independent works like the two here. I hope you enjoy or are amused by my works.
T.E. Adams
featured work: public transit butch tension
T.E. Adams (Terrence, Quintessence) is a multidisciplinary artist-poet and printmaker who likes words, noticing things, and trying to make the world a little less fascist. They also like walking their dog.
Teren Hazzard
featured works: Shut Up, It Doesn't Have To Rhyme
Teren Hazzard is a transgender writer living on Treaty Six territory in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). He is a University of Alberta student studying Conservation Biology and writing for both The Gateway and YouAlberta. His poetry explores the everyday experience of being queer and can be found in the Queer Toronto Literary Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, and Transit in Motion bus art. His poem, Dance with Us, Girly Girl, is the 1st-place winner of the 2025 Centre for Literature in Canada Poetry Contest. Look for his debut narrative poetry collection, Penguins Fly (April 2026).
Theodora Sterling
featured work: After
Theodora “Theo” Sterling (she/her) is a queer writer from Alberta who always carries a fountain pen and journal everywhere she goes. Her work has appeared in Funicular, FEELS Zine, Petal Projections, Snowflake Magazine, The Taborian, and elsewhere.
Ting Pimentel-Elger
featured work: May Sikreto Sa Buhay
Ting’s body of work represents diversity and multifariousness, intermixture of words, images, moves (including dance & yoga), languages, and cultural traditions, a variety of innovation and invention, and tons of fun. She embraces openness, diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and is a certified trauma-informed Yoga instructor. Her most recent collaborations were with the Alberta Filipino Journal, Polyglot Magazine, Hungryzine, Alberta Writers’ Guild Horizon Circle, Edmonton Chinese Writing Club, Filipino Artists of Edmonton, Gallery @501, AGA (Art Gallery of Alberta), UPAAE and The Shoe Project (amplifying the voice of immigrant women using shoes as metaphor) with the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre in Edmonton. When Ting isn't interpreting for the Canadian government or engaged in development work as a volunteer Sign Language interpreter, she advocates for self-care through activities such as yoga, intuitive arts, walking with puppies, hugging trees, or foraging in the nearby forest.
Viktorya Gyulinyan
featured work: Meaningful Loss
Viktorya is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and journalist whose work delves into the depths of human experience. Her poetry explores psychological themes, existential questions, and the complexities of life, often touching on loss, memory, identity, and the raw pain of living. Viktorya has recently had poetry published in The Bolo Tie Collective. She strives to craft words that resonate, giving readers the profound feeling of being understood and heard. Through her writing, Viktorya seeks to illuminate emotional truths, translating inner struggles into language that captures the intensity, fragility, and beauty of the human experience.
Zenith Kramp
featured works: A Letter to the Historian Who Killed Me Twice, Sheep, Only Sheep
Zenith Kramp writes for all the feral trans and queer folk who are growing in their fangs. Their creative nonfiction story, "before the mallard disappeared," will debut in the upcoming Bolo Tie Collective Volume X. You're most likely to find them cuddled up with the strangest book they could find, reading to their very sleepy Great Pyr.