Authors

Libros Authors

George Amabile
Attila F. Balázs
Ed O’Brien
P.W. Bridgman
Ross Buchanan
Shirley Camia
Constantine P. Cavafy
Luisa Maria Celis
Ion Deaconescu
Jan DeGrass
Dracc Dreque
Ron Duffy
Károly Fellinger / ΚΑΡΟΛΟΣ ΦΕΛΙΝΓΚΕΡ
Joanne Ford
Ioanna Frangia
Patricia Fraser
Robert N. Friedland
Oliver Friggieri
James Gangsan
Dina Georgantopoulos
Paul A. Green
Candice James
Kostas Karyotakis
Ken Kirkby
Vitsentzos Kornaros
Apryl Leaf
Angela Long
Loreena M. Lee
Gene Lees
Dimitris Liantinis
Tasos Livaditis
Tzoutzi Mantzourani
Manolis
János Márkus-Barbarossa
Don McLellan
Goody Niosi
Ben Nuttall-Smith
Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto
Maria Polydouri
Fauzia (Zohra) Rafique
Doug Ramsey
Doris Ray
Doris Riedweg
Yannis Ritsos
Ajmer Rode
Giorgos Seferis
John Skapski
Blanka Székely
Nikitas Terzis
Ilya Tourtidis
Istvan Turczi
Julie Vandervoort
Sam Wharton
Michael Zrymiak
..

Oliver Friggieri
Was born in Floriana, Malta, in 1947. He studied at the bishop’s seminary and he graduated from the University of Malta where he acquired a Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s in Maltese, Italian and Philosophy. In 1978 he acquired a Doctorate in Maltese Literature and Literary Criticism from the Catholic University of Milan, Italy. Friggieri began his teaching career in 1968 by teaching Maltese and Philosophy in secondary schools. Then, in 1976, he moved on teaching Maltese at the University of Malta, first as Assistant Lecturer, then as Lecturer, and later as Associate Lecturer. In 1988 he was chosen Head of the Department of Maltese. He became Professor in 1990. In the meantime, between 1970 and 1971 Friggieri was very active in Malta’s Literary Revival Movement. He was on the editorial board of Il-Polz, a Maltese literary periodical, of which he became editor. He co-founded Is-Saghtar, a children’s literary and cultural magazine, and remained on its editorial board ever since. In 1971 he collaborated in the establishment of a publishing house, Maltese Book Club, which facilitated the publishing of books in Maltese. He has been the editor of the Journal of Maltese Studies since 1980. He’s also a Member of the Association Internationale des Critiques Litteraires of Paris, France. In 2008 Friggieri published his autobiography. Friggieri is the author of innumerable books. These include dictionaries of literature, oratories, cantatas, literary criticism, literary biographies, and anthologies of his own poetry. Particular mention should be given to Malta’s national poet, Dun Karm Psaila, of whom Friggieri is an uncontested expert. Friggieri also significantly contributed essays on Peter Caxaro and Michael Anthony Vassalli.

Ion Deaconescu
Was born in Targu Logresti, Romania in 1947. He studied at the University of Bucharest where he obtained his PhD in philology. He served as professor of Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Geography at the University of Craiova. He has been Dean for International Relations of the same university, president of the Mihai Eminescu International Academy, President of the Pro East Association of International Studies and Director of the publishing company Europa. He’s a member of the Union of Writers of Romania, member of the Association of Romanian Journalists, member of the International Association of Romanian Writers and Artists USA, member of the Research and Advisory Council of the American Institute of Biographies, member of the Academy of Culture and Poetry of Mongolia and is an honorary member of Docleau Academy of Sciences and Arts of Montenegro. He has won numerous (over thirty) Prizes and Recognitions in Romania for his contribution to Romanian arts and culture, and many Prizes from other countries such as Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova, Japan, Cuba, Serbia, Belgium, Turkey, Italy, and he has been named Laureate of Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival. He has written many books of poetry, prose, articles, essays, reviews and he has translated literature that has been published throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.

George Amabile
Has published his poetry, fiction and non-fiction in the USA, Canada, Europe, England, Wales, South America, Australia and New Zealand in over a hundred anthologies, magazines, journals and periodicals including The New Yorker, The New Yorker Book of Poems, Harper’s, Poetry (Chicago), American Poetry Review, Botteghe Oscure, The Globe and Mail, The Penguin Book of Canadian Verse, Saturday Night, Poetry Australia, Sur (Buenos Aires), Poetry Canada Review, Canadian Literature, and Margin (England).

Attila F. Balázs
Poet, writer, editor, translator. Born in Tg. Mureş on 15. 01. 1954. Studies: Theoretical High School of Ditrău,
Roman-Catholic Institute of Theology Alba Iulia, 1973-1976.

Ed O’Brien
Was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in 1925. When grade school ended, his family moved to Oklahoma City, a town renowned at the time for the large number of producing oil wells inside the city limits, resulting in lively arguments among concerned citizens over who was entitled to royalty money: all the people on the block or the guy who had the derrick in his back yard. During World War II he flew fifty missions as an aerial gunner on a B-24 crew based at Grottaglie, Italy, located near the port city of Taranto. After graduation from the University of Oklahoma, he reported and edited for state newspapers. Then he worked in the public affairs field for the United States Air Force, in a civilian capacity. He returned to the university, after retirement, to study writing under J. Madison Davis and Deborah Chester.

P.W. Bridgman
Writes from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology and a degree in law as well. His short stories and flash fiction pieces have appeared in various literary publications. They have won prizes or been finalists in several competitions, both in Canada and abroad, and some have been included in anthologies published in Ireland, England and Scotland. This is Mr. Bridgman’s first book of fiction. He is determined that it will not be his last. While he is convinced that the short story is both the preeminent literary prose form and his true métier, when pressed Mr. Bridgman will also quietly admit to having begun work on a novel.

Ross Buchanan
Writer, Horseman, Leadership Adviser and “lover of life” – Ross is the author of the modern day western novel… He Rode Tall. Raised on the prairies, Ross has inherited a passion for pristine grasslands and rolling hills. An avid horseman his entire life, he has been in the saddle since an early age. Professionally, Ross serves as the CEO of Strategic Results International, a Leadership Development Firm he personally founded. Ross and his wife Charleen divide their time between summer at their wilderness retreat, Paradise Springs, above the sage in the high country of British Columbia, Canada and their winters on the west coast.

Shirley Camia
Is a broadcaster and journalist, born in Winnipeg to first-generation Filipino immigrants. She has traveled throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, sleeping alongside the rice fields of rural Japan and falling in love with Canada’s far north. Her debut collection, Calliope, illustrates the rich emotional complexity found in instances – the choice moments of life from bliss to darkness, that convey the eccentricities, vulnerabilities and strengths of human existence. She lives in Toronto with her partner, her two dogs and her fish.

Constantine P. Cavafy or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis
An autobiographical note of Cavafy was published in 1924 in the celebratory issue of the magazine “New Art”.
“I am from Constantinople by descent, but I was born in Alexandria-at a house on Seriph Street; I left at a young age and spent a lot of years of my childhood in England. I visited that country later on as an adult although for a short period of time. I also lived in France. During my adolescence I lived in Constantinople for about two years. I haven’t visited Greece for a lot of years. My last employment was as a clerk at a Government office under the Ministry of Public works of Egypt. I speak English, French, and some Italian.”

Luisa Maria Celis
Was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She lived in Germany and emigrated from Venezuela to Canada eight years ago where she studied English, Art and History courses at BCOU. Property Manager by profession and autodidact in most things, she started writing some fifteen years ago and has produced a self-published romance Dos Zafiros y un Rubi (2001), in Spanish, and poems, children’s stories in both English and Spanish. Arrows is the first of a series of three historical novels that tell the story of an epoch that saw the birth of the Caribbean.

Jan DeGrass
Writes in Gibsons, British Columbia, where she is Arts and Entertainment columnist for the Coast Reporter newspaper, and contributes a regular arts feature to Coast Life magazine. She leads a writing critique group and assists other authors with editing their manuscripts (www.edityourwords.ca). She has received a national award for a business article that contributed to Canadian co-operative literature and was a winner for Best Coverage of the Arts by a national newspaper association. She is the author of a corporate history book and a cookbook, Take Potluck! Her award-winning article, Loving in Leningrad, based on a true experience in the Soviet Union, drew on her university background in Russian language and literature and became the genesis of Jazz with Ella.

Dracc Dreque
Is the pen name of Gideon Enutsia Etorolopiaq who was born on January 14, 1964 in Iqaluit, Baffin Island, Nunavut, to a large extended family with numerous brothers, sisters, stepbrothers and stepsisters. He was orphaned at an early age when both his parents died after eating spoiled seal meat and he left school after grade four. Although he spent time in prison as an adolescent and young adult, he has not been incarcerated since 1983 when he was released from Stony Mountain Penitentiary. Dracc began writing his autobiography in 1998 and he now lives in Winnipeg where he works at a variety of jobs, reads books and adds to his memoirs.

Ron Duffy
Born and raised in Northern Ireland, Ron has traveled extensively in both western and eastern Europe, mostly by bicycle, with working sojourns” in Norway, Austria and England. Adventuring over, he settled to studies, and obtained a BA in Geography from Queen’s University in Belfast. As a student there he became involved in the activism that led to the start of the Troubles” in Northern Ireland in 1969. That year he emigrated to Canada where he took an MSc at the University of Calgary and studied for his PhD at McGill University in Montreal. In Montreal he started a long career as a university lecturer in Geography.

Károly Fellinger / ΚΑΡΟΛΟΣ ΦΕΛΙΝΓΚΕΡ
Ο ΚΑΡΟΛΟΣ ΦΕΛΙΝΓΚΕΡ γεννήθηκε στη Μπρατισλάβα της Σλοβακίας και τώρα ζει στην πόλη Jelka. Κατά τη διάρκεια των χρόνων του στην Ακαδημία της Galanta διετέλεσε επιμελητής της φοιτητικής εφημερίδας και ιδρυτικό μέλος του τριμηνιαίου λογοτεχνικού περιοδικού Words of Jelka από το 1993 έως το 2003. Έχει εκδόσει 18 ποιητικές συλλογές στην Ουγγρική γλώσσα. Η ποίησή του για ενήλικους και παιδιά έχει μεγάλη ανταπόκριση. Σαν μυθογράφος ασχολήθηκε με τη περισυλλογή ιστοριών και μύθων της περιοχής Matyusfold. Βιβλία του έχουν μεταφραστεί κι εκδοθεί στα Αγγλικά, στη Γερμανική γλώσσα, Ρουμανική, Σερβική, Γαλλική, Ρώσσικη, γλώσσα Σλοβακίας και Τουρκική. Έχει βραβευθεί δύο φορές με το Golden Opus Prize του Οργανισμού Συγγραφέων της Σλοβακίας και με το βραβείο 86 Imre Forbath για την καλύτερη συλλογή ποιημάτων στην Ουγγρική γλώσσα το έτος 2014. Το 2013 βραβεύθηκε με το πρώτο βραβείο σε λογοτεχνικό διαγωνισμό του Οργανισμού Συγγραφέων της Ουγγαρίας. Το 2014 εκλεγμένα του ποιήματα μεταφρασμένα στην α γγλική γλώσσα εκδόθηκαν στον Καναδά. Ποιήματά του έχουν παρουσιαστεί σε μεγάλο αριθμό λογοτεχνικών περιοδικών ανά τον κόσμο. Είναι μέλος του Οργανισμού Ούγγρων Συγγραφέων της Σλοβακίας και του Οργανισμού Συγγραφέων της Ουγγαρίας.

Joanne Ford
Was born in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa in 1944. She was educated at Ohio State University and Ohio University. She holds a Ph.D. and teaches courses in literature, creative writing, and lately media, film and culture studies at a small university in southeastern Ohio, The University of Rio Grande/Rio Grande Community College. She has published in the campus literary magazine, The Atwood Review and The Ship of Fools. She lives in Gallipolis, Ohio.

Ioanna Frangia
Was born in Peireus and lives in Athens. She worked as a tourist guide and also as a clinical psychologist. Because of her first career she travelled all over Greece and studied in depth the historical path of ancient Greek civilization from the prehistoric times to today. She studied psychology in Grenoble, France and worked for the National Energy Company &0394;a?? specializing in seminars for the human relations department and professional guidance of the personnel. She also worked in the Psychiatry Department of the same company where she dealt with pertaining issues.

Patricia Fraser
Patricia’s career has enabled her to savour history and ambience from Canada’s Yukon to Australia to the Pacific Northwest of British Columbia. A lengthy affiliation with The Writer’s Craft, a Canadian editing service, provided the nuts and bolts of strong writing. Her fictional pieces often draw on childhood experiences in the Yukon, while a current work-in-progress is set amongst the Northwest coast Haida and Tsimsian First Nations. She is equally comfortable with non-fiction.

Robert N. Friedland
Born in New York City in 1947, Friedland has been the Sheriff of a Judicial District; an investigator for the United States Treasury Department; a Regional Director of the Alberta Human Rights Commission; Human Rights Advisor for Malaspina University-College; a two-term City Councillor in Victoria, British Columbia; and, Chief Lawyer for a group of seven First Nations in the Interior of British Columbia. He currently practices human rights and administrative law in Vancouver, British Columbia.

James Gangsan
Was born and raised in Montreal but after finishing his university studies he moved to Seoul, South Korea where he has lived and worked ever since. While he was a graduate student, Gangsan became concerned about the dark aspects of globalization and in an attempt to understand the historical forces which gave birth to and nurtured the globalization movement he embarked on the writing of The Story of Your Ancestors. He is currently working on a comparative history of the country of his birth, Canada, and his adopted country, South Korea.

Dina Georgantopoulos
Was born in Vrahati, Corinth. She studied at the Law School of Athens. Her poems have appeared in various literary magazines on line and in paper form. “Caressing Myths” is her first poetry book outside Greece.

Paul A. Green
Paul grew up in South London, and studied at Oxford and the University of British Columbia. His plays have appeared on BBC Radio 3, CBC Radio Canada, RTE Ireland, Capital Radio and Resonance FM London. His poetry has been disseminated in magazines, anthologies and, increasingly, in audio formats via alternative radio stations, podcasts, and on-line journals like http://www.culturecourt.com. The enigma of the paranormal has been a constant theme in his work, exemplified in plays like Ritual of the Stifling Air, The Voice Collection, and Babalon, his speculative drama about occult rocket scientist Jack Parsons, recently performed by Travesty Theatre in London. The Qliphoth probes still further into these eldritch realms…

Candice James
Is a poet, musician, singer, songwriter and visual artist. She is currently in her second 3 year term as Poet Laureate of The City of New Westminster. She is President and founder of The Royal City Literary Arts Society; a full member of The League of Canadian Poets; Board Advisor The International Muse (India); Honorary Professor at the International Arts Academy (Greece); Past President of the Federation of British Columbia Writers; Past Director of SpoCan; Past President of Slam Central Spoken Word; creator of the long running events “Poetic Justice” and “Poetry in the Park”.

Kostas Karyotakis (11/11/1896 – 21/07/1928) is considered one of the most representative Greek poets of the 1920s and one of the first poets who used iconoclastic themes. His poetry, lyrical and romantic, conveys a great deal of nature, imagery and traces of expressionism and surrealism and it has been translated in more than thirty languages. He also belongs to the Greek Lost Generation movement. The majority of Karyotakis’ contemporaries viewed him in a dim light throughout his lifetime without a pragmatic accountability for their negative views; for after his suicide, the majority began to revert to the view that he was indeed a great poet. He had a significant, disproportionately progressive influence on later Greek poets. His works are taught in universities both in Hellas and abroad. Karyotakis gave existential depth as well as a tragic dimension to the emotional nuances and melancholic tones of the neo-symbolist and new-Romantic poetry of the time. With a rare clarity of spirit and penetrating vision, he captures and conveys with poetic daring the climate of dissolution and the impasses of his generation, as well as the traumas of his own inner spiritual self.

Ken Kirkby
Was born in 1940 in London, England. His family moved to Spain in 1945 and then, one year later, to Portugal where Kirkby spent his formative years. Kirkby moved to Canada in 1958 and made his way north. During a five-year period, he lived with various groups of Inuit and travelled Canada’s Far North extensively, recording the landscape, the people and the conditions in a vast collection of drawings.

Vitsentzos Kornaros

Apryl Leaf
Was born in Ashcroft, B.C. and was raised in the Interior town of Falkland. She composed her first poems at the age of 11. After graduation she enrolled in outdoor school and then studied music, creative writing and literature in North Vancouver, joining others in the summer months for reforestation work in the Interior and Coastal mountains. She became employed in a variety of marine-based work and marine studies as well as raising a daughter. She earned a journalism diploma, then worked as a reporter for small North and South Coast newspapers. She edits poetry for a Lower Mainland book publisher.

Angela Long
At the age of eighteen, Angela flew from Toronto to Frankfurt to begin a long-term love affair with faraway lands. She hitchhiked, cycled, bussed, walked, drove, sailed, and rode trains throughout Europe, Mexico, Central America, Northern Africa, India, America, and Canada. She stopped long enough in Montreal to obtain a diploma in Ceramics, and in Vancouver to complete a degree in Creative Writing. But mostly she kept moving. She volunteered in soup kitchens, orphanages, literacy centres, and farmers’ fields. She worked in restaurants, tree-planting camps, hotels, hostels, English-language schools, tutoring centres, gardens, pottery studios, and transition houses.

Loreena M. Lee, afca
Is an established artist, has instructed beginning artists for over 40 years and has exhibited her work since 1973. Her work hangs in corporations and private collections in Canada, as well as Hungary, Germany, Denmark and the United States. Her first novel, “Satin Shoes”, was published by Libros in 2009. She illustrated the children’s book, “Dragons I Know”, published by Ryan Publication in 2009.
Her cookbook, “Kitchen Tales,” was issued in 2010. As well as a biography entitled, “The Gabor Sisters of Smoky Lake”, she has published two art text books, “Drawing, the Theory of Relativity”, and “The Shapemakers Guide to Composition”, and has produced two training videos, “Finding Negative Space”, and “Sea and Snow, Techniques in Watercolor”.

Gene Lees
One of the world’s most acclaimed writers on music, Gene is the author of eighteen books, including biographies of Oscar Peterson, Woody Herman, and Johnny Mercer, as well as several volumes of essays. He is six-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He has been a newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent, classical music and jazz critic, music and drama editor of the Louisville Times, editor of Down Beat, contributing editor for High Fidelity and Stereo Review, contributor to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Globe and Mail, and many other publications in America and Europe.

Dimitris Liantinis
The author, educator, philosopher and poet, Professor of philosophy in education at the University of Athens until 1998, was born in 1942 in the prefecture of Lakonia. In 1972 in Munich he met Nikolitsa Georgopoulou, Professor of Introduction to Philosophy and History of Philosophy at the University of Athens, whom he married in 1973. On the 1st of June 1998, Liantinis disappeared from his family and his university environment.

Tasos Livaditis (Anastasios Panteleimon Livaditis)
Was born in Athens April 20, 1922, son of Lissandros Livaditis and Vasiliki Kontoloulou. He was enrolled in the Law School of the University of Athens. German occupation interrupted his studies and his involvement with the Resistance and the political party EPON. His father, bankrupt by this time died during the occupation years and while the poet was exiled in Makronisos his mother also died. In 1946 he got married to Maria Stoupa, the valuable companion of his life and they had a daughter, Vassiliki.

Tzoutzi Mantzourani
Was born in Athens, Greece, in 1959. She studied French Literature and Language at Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, USA, and worked as a journalist in several Greek newspapers and magazines until 2009. She has published up three poem collections and a book of short stories. She has translated theatrical pieces from Greek into English and is currently working on a translation of Dorothy Parker’s work in Greek. Her work has been translated in French, Spanish and English. She lives in Athens, Greece.

Manolis (Emmanuel Aligizakis)
Is a Cretan-Canadian poet and author. He’s the most prolific writer-poet of the Greek diaspora. At the age of eleven he transcribed the nearly 500 year old romantic poem Erotokritos, now released in a limited edition of 100 numbered copies and made available for collectors of such rare books at 5,000 dollars Canadian: the most expensive book of its kind to this day. He was recently appointed an honorary instructor and fellow of the International Arts Academy, and awarded a Master’s for the Arts in Literature. He is recognized for his ability to convey images and thoughts in a rich and evocative way that tugs at something deep within the reader. Born in the village of Kolibari on the island of Crete in 1947, he moved with his family at a young age to Thessaloniki and then to Athens, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences from the Panteion University of Athens. After graduation, he served in the armed forces for two years and emigrated to Vancouver in 1973, where he worked as an iron worker, train labourer, taxi driver, and stock broker, and studied English Literature at Simon Fraser University. He has written three novels and numerous collections of poetry, which are steadily being released as published works. His articles, poems and short stories in both Greek and English have appeared in various magazines and newspapers in Canada, United States, Sweden, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Australia, Jordan, Serbia and Greece. His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Romanian, Swedish, German, Hungarian, Ukrainian, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, Serbian, Russian, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, languages and has been published in book form or in magazines in various countries. He now lives in White Rock, where he spends his time writing, gardening, traveling, and heading Libros Libertad, an unorthodox and independent publishing company which he founded in 2006 with the mission of publishing literary books. His translation book “George Seferis-Collected Poems” was shortlisted for the Greek National Literary Awards the highest literary recognition of Greece. In September 2017 he was awarded the First Poetry Prize of the Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival, in Craiova, Romania.
More on Manolis Aligizakis

János Márkus-Barbarossa
I was born on the 4th of June, 1955 in a small Transylvanian village, Szilágyzovány. After the early divorce of my parents I was mainly raised by my nun aunts in the convent of Szilágysomlyó, after which I wound up at my grandmother, in Nagyvárad. Nagyvárad was an interesting place even in the 13-14 the year after the World War, because these are the years I have permanent memories from: one could still feel the presence of the missing part of the citizens of the town, which was considered a small town by that time.

Don McLellan
Has worked as a journalist in Canada, South Korea, and Hong Kong. He currently edits Insurancewest, an award-winning trade magazine in Vancouver, B.C. In the Quiet After Slaughter represents his fiction debut. Twelve of its 17 stories have previously appeared in Canadian and U.S. literary magazines.

Goody Niosi
Was born in Karlsruhe, Germany and immigrated to Canada when she was five years old. Passionate about books, she had decided by age ten that she would be a writer when she grew up, although her first career was as a film editor in Toronto and Vancouver. Goody writes for Business Vancouver Island, Fraser Valley and other publications. She also directs, produces and edits videos. She lives above a stable in the country near Nanaimo BC with her dog, Abby. Goody’s published books include Magnificently Unrepentant, The Story of Merve Wilkinson and Wildwood; Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives; Nanaimo, The Harbour City and The Romance Continues, The Art and Gardens of Grant Leier and Nixie Barton.

Ben Nuttall-Smith
Taught Music, Theatre, Art, and Language until he retired in 1991. He now lives in Crescent Beach, near Vancouver B.C., where he writes, paints, makes music, and travels with his best friend and soulmate. An active member of the Writers Union of Canada, the Canadian Authors’ Association, the Federation of British Columbia Writers, and the Canadian Poetry Association, Ben has published three books of poetry Word Painting, Splashes of Light and Scribbles from Afar and an illustrated children’s story Henry Hamster Esquire. His first novel Blood, Feathers and Holy Men was published by Libros Libertad in January, 2011.

Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto
Was born in Gabela, South of Angola. He left his country in 1975 due to the civil war, and he lived in Zimbabwe and the Azores islands before moving to Canada in 1983. He is the author of several fiction and poetry books in Portuguese and his poetry has been included in various anthologies in Portugal, England, United States and Brazil. Eduardo is the editor of the Seixo Review, an Arts and Literary magazine published online, and he is also working on a new novel. Casa das rugas (House of Wrinkles), his latest novel, is about the last days of colonialism in Angola.

Maria Polydouri was the daughter of the teacher philologist Eugene Polydouri and Kiriaki Markatou a woman of early feministic views. She graduated from high-school in Kalamata. She appeared in the letters at the age of fourteen with the prose poem Pain of a Mother which related the death of a seaman who was washed out at the beaches of Filliatra, a costal Peloponese town. The prose poem was influenced by lamentations she heard in Mani, Peloponese. At the age of sixteen she was appointed at the town hall of Messinia while she expressed special interest about the women’s issues of those days. During the year 1920 and in a span of only forty days she lost both her parents.
In 1921 she was transferred to the Prefecture of Attica and at the same time she was enrolled in the Law department of the University of Athens. While working at the Prefecture of Attica she met the poet and colleague Kostas Karyotakis. A mutual strong attraction joined them that lasted for a short while although it marked their lives to their end. They met January 1922 for the first time. Maria was 20 years old while he was 26. She had published a few poems up to that day and Karyotakis and two books of poetry already published which won him the respect of a few critics and other poets of that era.

Fauzia (Zohra) Rafique
A South Asian Canadian writer of fiction and poetry, Fauzia writes in English, Punjabi and Urdu. She was recognized in 2012 by peer group WIN Canada as ‘Distinguished Poet & Novelist’ for her first novel ‘Skeena’ (Libros Libertad 2011) and the first chapbook of English and Punjabi poems ‘Passion Fruit/Tahnget Phal’ (Uddari Books 2011). Her eBook of poems ‘Holier Than Life’ was published in 2013. Earlier, she edited an anthology of writings of women of South Asian origin, ‘Aurat durbar: The Court of Women’ (Toronto 1995). In Pakistan, Fauzia worked as a journalist and screenwriter.
More about Fauzia is here

Doug Ramsey
The author of Poodie James, Doug is a novelist, biographer, print and broadcast journalist, news executive, educator of professional journalists and blogger. He is also a well-known jazz critic and has contributed to numerous periodicals including Jazz Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is included in Who’s Who In America. Ramsey is at work on a new novel.

Doris Ray
Is a retired home support worker who resides with her husband in the Fraser Lake-Endako area of North Central British Columbia. Doris’s first book The Ghosts Behind Him (Caitlin Press 1999) chronicling her family’s devastating experiences with her son Bruce’s schizophrenia, was the recipient of a BC2000 Book award. Over the years she has self-published volumes of poetry and short fiction. In 1998 Doris received a phone call relaying some previously unknown and intriguing information concerning her mother’s family history. The book Common Threads is based upon bits and pieces of archival data and personal reminiscences, which have been strung together with a whole lot of conjecture on the part of the author.

Doris Riedweg
Is the author of three previous novels. Her articles and short stories have appeared in several major newspapers, as well as in Canadian literary magazines. Two of her short stories have won awards in writing contests. She is the editor and coauthor of The Hospital on the Hill, a history of Langley Memorial Hospital, published in 1997; and the author of Strawberry Shortcake, a history of Elliott School District in Saskatchewan.
A native of Saskatchewan and a graduate of Vancouver General Hospital School of Nursing, Doris lives with her husband John on a farm in Langley, B.C.

Yannis Ritsos
Was born in Monemvassia (Greece), on May 1st, 1909 as cadet of a noble family of landowners. His youth is marked by devastations in his family: economic ruin, precocious death of the mother and the eldest brother, internment of the father suffering of mental unrests. He spends four years (1927-1931) in a sanatorium to take care of his tuberculosis. These tragic events mark him and obsess his œuvre. Readings decide him to become poet and revolutionary. Since 1931, he is close to the K.K.E., the Communist Party of Greece. He adheres to a working circle and publishes Tractor (1934), inspired of the futurism of Maïakovski, and Pyramids (1935), two works that achieve a balance still fragile between faith in the future, founded on the Communist ideal, and personal despair…

Ajmer Rode
Has published more than 20 books and chapbooks of poetry, drama, prose and translation in Punjabi and English. His works are included in reputed Punjabi and English anthologies and prescribed in universities of Punjab and Delhi. His 1000-page book Leela (co-author N. Bharati) critically acclaimed as an outstanding work of the 20th century Punjabi poetry. His awards include Lifetime Achievement Award by the University of British Columbia and Best Overseas Author award by the Punjab Languages department.

Giorgos Seferis
Was born in Smyrna, Asia Minor, in 1900. He attended school in Smyrna and finished his studies at the Gymnasium in Athens. When his family moved to Paris in 1918, Seferis studied law at the University of Paris and became interested in literature. He returned to Athens in 1925 and was admitted to the Royal Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He held posts in England (1931-1934) and Albania (1936-1938). During the Second World War, Seferis accompanied the Free Greek Government in exile to Crete, Egypt, South Africa, and Italy, and returned to liberated Athens in 1944. He held diplomatic posts in Ankara (1948-1950), London (1951-1953); was appointed minister to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq (1953-1956), and was Royal Greek Ambassador to the UK (1957-1961).

John Skapski
Was born in London, England, in the middle of the Second World War, to Polish and English descent. After the war, his family moved to a small town in Paraguay, where there were no roads, water, or electricity. After immigration to Vancouver, Canada, Skapski got involved in the local fishing industry and studied at UBC, where he, influenced by J. Michael Yates, switched over from Engingeering to Honours English. After completing his Masters degree in Creative Writing, Skapski started gillnetting on his own in the Steveston area, and continued to do so throughout his law studies at UBC. As a practicing lawyer, he gradually diminished his fishing duties to stay home with his family. Now, he still lives in Steveston and enjoys writing and playing ice hockey with his son.

Blanka Székely
I was born in Marosvásárhely in 1980 December, so I was exactly 9 years old when the Romanian Revolution happened. When Ceausescu was overthrown and got shot I was quite happy because my days spent in standing in line to buy some bread were over. We, the children could comprehend from the surrounding happenings more than anyone could guess. That’s why they call our generation the messed up generation of Romania.

Nikitas Terzis
Was born in Athens in 1953 and grew up in Canada. He received his M.Eng. from the University of Toronto and held a variety of engineering design jobs in Canada and in Greece.
His first novel, The Adventures of Asher, Frude, Bonham, was published in Greek by Ellinika Grammata in 2004.

Ilya Tourtidis
Was born in Greece in 1949. He moved to Australia when he was four years old and to Canada when he was fifteen. Educated at the University of Victoria, he worked as a teacher and later as a School Counselor in the Comox Valley where he now resides. He was Co-winner of the Gerald Lampert Award in 1994 for his first book of poems, Mad Magellan’s Tale. A subsequent collection of his poetry, The Spell of Memory was published in 2004. This was followed by a further collection, Path of Descent and Devotion, published in 2009. In addition to poetry, Ilya Tourtidis also writes screenplays, novels, and children’s stories.

Julie Vandervoort
Has received several awards for her creative non-fiction essays and her biography of Dr. Elinor Black, Tell the Driver. She produced a piece called “Moving from Coping to Creating” for a national law conference and was recently invited as a keynote speaker at the conference Imagining Amsterdam: Visions and Revisions.

Istvan Turczi
Is one of the Hungarian poets widely known and acknowledged within and outside of his country. He published twenty volumes of poetry, five novels, numerous plays and radio dramas. he has received the highest literary awards and orders including Poet Laureate, Prima Primissima and the Knight’s Cross. He is also a noted translator, rendering the works of Australian, Finnish, Israeli and Scottish authors into Hungarian. His own pieces have been translated into seventeen languages; his poetry collections were published in France, Germany, Israel, Norway, Romania, Taiwan and USA. In 1995 he founded the only Hungarian poetry journal, and then six years later his publishing house, both named Parnasszus. He serves as the Secretary General of the Hungarian PEN Club and as the Chairman of Poets’ section in Hungarian Writers’ Association. And he is the 2nd Vice President of World Congress of Poets. In his remaining time he loves to write lyrics to pop-rock music, and is happy to teach creative writing at Metropolitan University, Budapest. He feels proud and privileged to having had the first collection of his poems published in Vancouver, Canada.

Sam Wharton
Was born in England and educated in the British boarding school system and then joined the military. At the completion of military service he came to Canada, where he spent several years in research and development in a hi-tech company and later joined the federal public service. He began writing after taking early retirement in 1997 and is a frequent correspondent for local and national newspapers. He is currently working on the third volume of a trilogy loosely based on his own experiences in post-war England.

Michael Zrymiak
Is a Saskatchewan native son. He earned his RCAF pilot wings in 1955, when he began an interesting three and a half decade air force career during the Cold War era. Highlights included flying with the VIP transport squadron in Ottawa, as a pilot for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and dignitaries such as Pierre E. Trudeau. He attended National Defense College and in 1985 was selected as the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. He retired in 1987 and transferred to the Air Reserve to serve another four years representing British Columbia interests.

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