Dead Poets Reading Series Coordinators

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Fiona Tinwei Lam
 has authored three poetry collections (Intimate Distances, Enter the Chrysanthemum, and Odes & Laments) and a children’s book (The Rainbow Rocket). She also edited The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems about Facing Cancer and co-edited two nonfiction collections, Double Lives: Writing & Motherhood and Love Me TrueShe has collaborated on award-winning poetry videos that have screened internationally. Shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Award among other awards, and thrice selected for BC’s Poetry in Transit, her work appears in over forty anthologies, including Best Canadian Poetry (2010, 2017 anniversary edition, and 2020). She was recently appointed Vancouver's sixth Poet Laureate. She teaches at SFU Continuing Studies. fionalam.net  

Raoul Fernandes lives and writes in Vancouver, with his wife and two sons. He first collection of poems, Transmitter and Receiver (Nightwood Editions, 2015) won the Dorothy Livesay Award and the Debut-litzer Award for Poetry in 2016 and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. He has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English. raoulfernandes.com



Jane Munro's newest poetry collection is False Creek (Harbour Publishing, 2022). Her recent books include Open Every Window: A Memoir (Douglas & McIntyre, 2021) and Glass Float (Brick Books, 2020). A Sally Port (Espresso Chapbooks) came out in 2019. Munro's sixth poetry collection, Blue Sonoma (Brick Books) won the 2015 Griffin Poetry Prize. Her previous books include Active Pass (Pedlar Press), Point No Point (McClelland & Stewart), and Grief Notes & Animal Dreams (Brick Books). She is a member of the collaborative poetry group, Yoko's Dogs (Jan Conn, Mary di Michele, Susan Gillis, Jane Munro) who have published Whisk (Pedlar Press, 2013), Rhinoceros (Gaspereau, 2016), and Caution Tape (Collusion Books, 2021). 



Kevin Spenst is the author of Ignite, Jabbering with Bing Bong, (both with Anvil Press), and over a dozen chapbooks including Pray Goodbye (the Alfred Gustav Press), Ward Notes (the serif of nottingham), and Flip Flop Faces and Unexpurgated Lives (JackPine Press). His work has won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry, been nominated for both the Alfred G. Bailey Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and has appeared in dozens of publications including subTerrain magazine, Prairie Fire, CV2, the Rusty Toque, BafterC, Lemon Hound, Poetry is Dead, and the anthology Best Canadian Poetry 2014. Kevin has been a DPRS coordinator since 2017.


Isabella Wang is a young, emerging Chinese-Canadian writer from Vancouver. Her poetry is published in Room Magazine, The /tEmz/ Review, Train Journal, and Looseleaf Magazine. Her essays are published in carte blanche, Invisible Blog, and The New Quarterly. At 18, she is a two-time finalist and the youngest writer shortlisted for The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Essay Contest. She is studying English at SFU, volunteering as the youth advocate for the Federation of BC Writers, working with Books on the Radio, and interning at Room. Isabella has been a DPRS coordinator since 2018.

Past Coordinators


Joanne Arnott was a DPRS coordinator since 2017.

Joanne is a Métis/mixed-blood writer and mother to six young people. She has published six books of poetry: Wiles of Girlhood (Press Gang) won the LCP’s Gerald Lampert Award in 1992; books-in-print: Steepy mountain love poetry (Kegedonce 2004), Mother Time (Ronsdale 2007), A Night for the Lady (Ronsdale 2013), and Halfling spring: an internet romance (Kegedonce 2014). She published a children’s illustrated book and a collection of nonfiction, and was text editor for Salish Seas: an anthology of text + image (AWCWC 2011). Joanne is currently Poetry Editor for Event magazine. She is a past volunteer with Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast, The Writers Union of Canada, and The Writers’ Trust. 


Shazia Hafiz Ramji was a DPRS coordinator since 2017 and managed the website. 

Shazia is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 Vancouver Book Award, 2019 BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), 2019 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry NorthwestQuill & Quire, Best Canadian Poetry 2019 and THIS magazine. CBC recently named her as a “writer to watch” and hailed Port of Being as one of the best Canadian poetry books of 2018. Shazia lives on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh nations, where she works as an English and creative writing instructor and as an editor for various presses across Canada. Shazia is a columnist for Open Book and is currently at work on a novel. Her first chapbook is Prosopopoeia (Anstruther Press, 2017). 


Diane Tucker was a DPRS coordinator from 2011 - 2022.

Diane grew up a singing, acting and writing child in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her first book of poems, God on His Haunches (Nightwood Editions, 1996) was shortlisted for the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her other poetry titles are Bright Scarves of Hours (Palimpsest Press, 2007) and Bonsai Love (Harbour Publishing, 2014). Her poems have been published in more than fifty journals in Canada and abroad. Her first novel, His Sweet Favour, was released by Thistledown Press in 2009. She edits books too, but crafts and paints to free herself from the endless run of words in her head. 

Kate Braid was a DPRS coordinator from 2012 - 2017.

Kate has published six books of poetry and co-edited with Sandy Shreve the first book of Canadian form poetry, In Fine Form (Polestar, 2005), a new and expanded second edition of which was published in 2016 by Caitlin Press. Kate is also the author of three biographies and a memoir, Journeywoman (Caitlin, 2012), of her 15 years in construction. Her poetry has won or been short-listed for a number of awards including the Pat Lowther and Vancity Awards, and her essays and poems are widely anthologized. She has been recognized as one of the 2012 Remarkable Women of the Arts In Vancouver and that year was also writer-in-residence at Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, New Mexico. Kate was the 2015 recipient of the City of Vancouver's Mayor's Arts Award for the Literary Arts. You can learn more about Kate on her website.


Christopher Levenson co-founded the "revived" DPRS series with Diane Tucker and Rob Taylor, and was a DPRS coordinator from 2011 - 2017.

Christopher is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently A tattered coat upon a stick (Quattro Books, 2017). His previous book, Night Vision (Quattro Books, 2014), was a finalist for the Governor General's Award. He co-founded and served as first editor of Arc magazine, then went on to found and run the Arc Reading Series in downtown Ottawa from 1981 to 1991. He was also Series Editor for the late Carleton University Press's Harbinger Poetry Series, which published two first books of poetry annually for the four years of its existence. He has lived in Germany, the Netherlands and the USA, and travelled widely in Europe and Asia, but since 2007 has finally settled down in Vancouver.


Sandy Shreve was a DPRS coordinator for six glorious months in 2012.

Sandy has published five poetry collections, most recently Waiting for the Albatross (Oolichan, 2015). She co-edited, with Kate Braid, the anthology In Fine Form – The Canadian Book of Form Poetry (Polestar, 2005); edited Working For A Living, a collection of poems and stories by women about their work (Room of One’s Own, 1988) and founded BC’s Poetry in Transit program.


Rob Taylor co-founded the "revived" DPRS series with Diane Tucker and Christopher Levenson, and was a DPRS coordinator from 2011 - 2018.

He is the author of the poetry collections "Oh Not So Great": Poems from the Depression Project (Leaf Press, 2017), The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and The Other Side of Ourselves (Cormorant Books, 2011). The News was a finalist for the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. He is also the editor of What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood, 2018) and guest editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2019 (Biblioasis, 2019). Rob was the 2015 recipient of the City of Vancouver's Mayor's Arts Award for the Literary Arts (Emerging Artist). He blogs here and websites here.

David Zieroth founded the Dead Poets Reading Series in 2007, and operated it until 2010.

David is the author of twelve books, including The Fly in Autumn (Habour Publishing, 2009), which won the Governor General's Award for Poetry. He has also written five chapbooks, the latest of which is Hay Day Canticle (Leaf Press, 2010). David runs the chapbook series The Alfred Gustav Press from his home in North Vancouver. More information on David can be found by visiting his website.

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