SQUID Issue 04 Contributors
Introducing the talented contributors to the collection in our fourth issue of SQUID Literary & Arts Magazine.
This issue is overflowing with amazing work in the genres of visual arts, fiction, creative non-fiction, articles, and essays.
Explore the contributors' bios below to learn more about their inspirations and other projects.
Thank you to all of our contributors and anyone who submitted their work to this issue. We can't wait to share the issue with you. It's now possible to order it online. And keep an eye on our pages for info on our upcoming issue launch party.
Visual Arts
Rebecca Microsaint is an oil painter and illustrator from Canada.
May Steele is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal. They have been making collages with their phone and tablet since 2025 as a mode of visual experimentation. They also work with traditional painting and drawing materials, written word, and musical composition.
Nathaniel Hicks-Voll (he/they) is a writer, visual artist, performer and arts educator living in the Willow River Watershed (Kitchener, Ontario). A settler on this land, his work plays with the tension between the natural and the suburban to examine themes of humanness, accountability and equity. Their collage work has been exhibited in galleries including the Berlin Tower Artspace and The Gallery at Central, featured in publications including CAFÉ and Collage-Lab, and installed in public art initiatives like the Downtown Kitchener Art Walk and Canvas in the Sky. His piece, Icarus, won the People's Choice 2nd Place award in 100 Kellogg Lane’s 2026 Art Comp. Find more of their work online at nathanielhicksvoll.com.
Claire Sherwood (she/her) is a Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller. In 2025 she was a finalist for the Ian Ferrier Spoken Word Prize. @clairethepoetsherwood
Delia Landers is an artist and political theorist from Philadelphia living and working in Montreal. They received their BA in Fine Art and Political Science from Bryn Mawr in 2019 and an MA in Political Theory at the University of Toronto in 2020. Delia primarily works in oil to create colourful impressionist style paintings, though their practice spans many mediums. Their work explores themes of imagined realities, exploration of identity, interpersonal dynamics, and the beauty of the mundane. They have been selected for numerous exhibitions and residencies in Montreal. They work as the assistant Curator at Galerie ERGA and as a freelance website designer. Delia is inspired by the world around them, by other artists both within and outside of their community, by literature and philosophy, and by a deep exploration of self.
Fiction
Jeremy Zelken is a Chicago-born writer and English Honours student at McGill University in Montreal. Beyond his own creative work, he serves as an editor for Scrivener Creative Review and The Veg Magazine.
Andrew Allan Chibi is a Canadian historian and fiction writer based in Windsor, Ontario (pen name A Allan Chibi). A former university lecturer and sub‑warden in a large student residence, he writes stories that explore the uncanny edges of memory, identity, and human connection. His work has appeared in House of Long Shadows, Altered Reality Magazine, Infinity Wonders, Tut Social, and other venues. He’s active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter/X (@AndrewChibi), and his website is ChibiFiction.com.
T. Elizabeth Clark is a Canadian Writer, based in Ontario. She primarily works with themes of mental health, friendship, and how the culture of small towns affects women and their relationships and views on love. On Air and Drowning is a short fiction piece, which grapples with the overwhelm that anxiety places on the body.
Cassandra Sarah Pegg is a Montreal-based writer with an MA in English Literature from Concordia. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Crab Apple Literary, and is finding her footing in both real and unreal worlds.
Creative Nonfiction
Boris But is a writer and poet who grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in Montreal. He previously was the creative editor of Graphite Publications. After a few years away from writing, he is happy to be making things again.
T.L. Aguinaga is a proud Québécois writer from the National Capital Region of Canada. A graduate from the University of Alberta, Aguinaga writes primarily about issues of identity and belonging. His most recent work, published by CBC, discussed how living in Alberta forced him to reconcile his French Canadian roots with his federalist values. Currently, he is working on a collection of personal essays and poetry related to further exploring his national identity.
J.L. Orango is a British Columbia writer whose work explores survival, motherhood, coercive control, memory, and the ordinary life built afterward. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming with CAASE, Synchronized Chaos, and other literary and advocacy publications. She is the author of the completed literary memoir The Girl Who Came Back.
Article & Essay
Brooke Lee is a Canadian, QWOC writer and musician based in Montreal. She hosts an online creative writing workshop called Sapphic Writes! and her work has been featured in Read Quebec, Montreal Review of Books, The Miramichi Reader, and The British Columbia Review. In 2026, she founded Subgenres, a literary press for short fiction. Brooke writes fiction and songs under the pen name River Lee. She is a former fiction mentee of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Mentorship Program, a fiction reader for the Ex-Puritan, and a Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient for her work-in-progress, debut novel (a blended work of prose and songs). She’s also the event producer and host of SUNDROP: a community platform for musicians in Montreal.
Crystal Rondeau is known as SuperGimpChick on social media, she’s a Canadian woman who lives with a severe physical disability. She is a published model, an author, and a fierce advocate for people with disabilities; she deep dives topics surrounding disability that people tend to try and avoid.
Poetry
Norah Bowman, she/they, is a queer poet living on unceded Syilx lands. Her most recent book, My Eyes Are Fuses (2024, Caitlin Press), celebrates the lives of womxn artists living through patriarchal violence with power and beauty.
Susan Ioannou is a widely published Canadian poet, from her first collection Clarity Between Clouds (Goose Lane Editions) to more recent Poems on Geology, Metals, Minerals, and Mining (Wordwrights Canada), as well as books of fiction and literary nonfiction. Her website is https://www.susanio.ca/.
Grace Q. Hu (胡青青), pen name Jiahe Sansheng (稼禾三笙), is a Chinese-Canadian writer and poet. Before immigrating to Canada, she worked as a materials engineer and department manager, later moving into television production and scriptwriting. After immigrating to Canada, she worked in quality control while continuing to write. Her work spans poetry, prose, microfiction, short stories, and novels. Her microfiction collection Walking Alone Through Time was published in 2019. Her English microfiction Two Good People appeared in The Bare Bones Book of Humour and was recommended for consideration by The Best Small Fictions. Her poetry collection Walking and Singing has been published on Amazon, and her award-winning microfiction Empty City appeared in New Literary Writing, the flagship journal of the Singapore Writers Association, in 2026. She currently writes about place, memory, migration, nature, and the relationship between human beings and the living world.
Laura Cok is a writer and editor based in Guelph, Ontario. She has been published widely across Canada and has previously won the EJ Pratt Medal, the U of T Alumni Poetry Award, and the LCP Broadsheet Contest, and her debut book of poetry, Doubter's Hymnal, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert award.
Kendyl Daley is a 22-year-old writer from northern New Brunswick, Canada. Her work has been published in Scrivener Creative Review, The Veg, Yiara Magazine, Soliloquies Anthology, Snaps, and The Channel. In 2025, her poem “Brine” was published in Perched, a Canadian poetry anthology.
Mikaela Nuval, a Filipino-Canadian emerging poet based in Richmond, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam. I am a current student at the SFU Writer's Studio, and can be seen reading my poetry all over the Lower Mainland. You can also find me at mika.nuval.writes on Instagram.
Jason Santerre is a poet and editor living in Montreal. His work has appeared in various Canadian publications, from Grain and subTerrain to The Frog Pond Review and The Fiddlehead. His most recent chapbook, Year of the Dog, will be published in September 2026 by Turret House Press.
Dr. Mélanie Proulx is a queer and disabled artist based in Montreal. She earned a Ph.D. in cultural studies from Queen's University and recently completed a postdoc at McGill University. Other than academic writing, Mélanie has also published several creative works, including three picture books (two of which are forthcoming with Bayard Jeunesse Canada in 2027 and 2028) and several short comics in literary magazines. She is currently working on her first graphic memoir.
Mélisandre Lacombe lives in Montreal and is of Haitian heritage. She is a self-published author who writes poetry about her journey through womanhood and all the colors of her inner and outer dialogue. As a working wife and mother, she connects deeply with Toni Morrison’s words: “I stole time to write.” Pulled in many directions, she carves out time at the end of each day to write, because her words continue to insist on being written.
Stephanie Rochemont is a Montreal-based poet with a background in environmental science and forest restoration. Her writing explores the intersections of ecology, grief, identity, and the human experience. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, her work examines the relationship between our internal landscapes and the environments we inhabit.
Claire Sherwood (she/her) is a Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller. In 2025 she was a finalist for the Ian Ferrier Spoken Word Prize. @clairethepoetsherwood
Lucas Benson is a Montreal based poet and playwright.
Alan King is a mathematician-poet in Vancouver, BC. His poetry explores the spiritual dimension of everyday experience. He studies with Daniela Elza.
Jeanette Marcotte (she/her) is a geologist, a health coach, a farm kid, a crafting enthusiast, and an unrepentant daydreamer. Her high school English teacher got her hooked on writing poetry and she has been scribbling bits of her soul onto paper ever since, frequently outside of the lines.
Hannah Barrie is a writer and researcher living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She was a 2024 recipient of the Hamilton Arts & Letters Short Works Prize for Poetry. You can find her at hannahbarrie.ca.
Daniela Elza's sixth poetry collection Scar/city (MQUP, 2025) is shortlisted for the 2026 City of Vancouver Award & George Ryga Award. Her debut memoir "Is This an Illness or an Accident?” (Caitlin Press, 2025) delves into the conflicts and contradictions of what it means to belong, work, and to find home. When she is not writing or volunteering in her community Daniela works as a creative writing instructor, editor, & mentor on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver.
Carella Keil’s debut poetry collection, Undercover Butterfly, is available from Dark Thirty Poetry Publishing. She is the 2023 Door is a Jar Writing Award winner in nonfiction and the Fall 2025 Cardinal Sins first-place award recipient in fiction. She has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and is the featured artist for the Fall 2024 issue of Blue Earth Review. She has been published in numerous Canadian literary journals including Filling Station, Feels Zine, Acta Victoriana and Existere. Her art appears on the covers of over a dozen literary journals. instagram.com/catalogue.of.dreams| x.com/catalogofdream
Comments