Poetry, Philosophy, and Reckoning

Leesa Dean is the author of three books and two poetry chapbooks. Her first book, Waiting for the Cyclone, was a finalist for the 2017 Trillium and Relit Awards. Her most recent publication, Interstitial (Gaspereau Press) was published in Spring 2026 and features poems that were finalists for the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest, the Diagram Chapbook Contest, and the international Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize. She teaches Creative Writing at Selkirk College where she helps run The Black Bear Review, a journal dedicated to elevating the work of local and emerging writers. She lives in Krestova, BC where she recently finished writing a gothic romance novel about late 90s indie rock, female friendship, and complex families.

Scott Alexander Howard has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, where his research focused on the relationship between emotion and memory. His debut novel, The Other Valley, was an instant national bestseller,…