BIPOC Creators Showcase

Sakeina Syed

Sakeina Syed is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. She focuses on public policy, social issues, and culture. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Toronto Star, The Walrus, Maisonneuve, Teen Vogue, and others. She received a Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) Award and an Amnesty International Canada Media Award, and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. Currently, she is a Journalism Fellow at The Local magazine and a VOICES Fellow with the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA). Sakeina graduated from York University in 2023, where she studied public administration and creative writing.

Raksha Vasudevan

Born in India and raised in Canada, Raksha Vasudevan is a journalist and essayist. She has reported on issues of race, environmental justice, and foreign aid for The New York Times, VICE, Outside, High Country News and more. Her essays and commentary on colonial legacy, family estrangement, and the paradoxes of international development appear in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, Hazlitt, The Washington Post, and LitHub, among others. You can find more of her work at www.rakshavasudevan.com. She also tweets @RakshaVasudevan.

Christina Brobby

Christina Brobby’s non-fiction work has appeared in a number of literary journals and Canadian anthologies including Black Writers Matter (edited by Whitney French). She was the winner of the Malahat Review’s 2020 Constance Rooke Creative Non-fiction contest as well as The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Short Prose competition in 2022 for her lyric prose piece, Moon in Fragments, published in Exile Quarterly.

Christina acknowledges with gratitude that she lives and creates on the Traditional Territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council in the Yukon.

Lauren Tamaki

Lauren Tamaki is a Canadian illustrator and designer who currently lives in New York. She loves acrylic ink, pencils and watercolour paper. Her clients include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Pentagram, Penguin,The New Yorker and Disney. She is honored to have been recognized by Society of Illustrators, Society of News Design, American Illustration and the National Magazine Awards. Her book with Elizabeth Partridge, Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration received a Sibert Medal in 2023. 

Aliya Ghare

Aliya Ghare is a Canadian illustrator and designer. Her work ranges from children’s picture books to editorial and advertising illustration, surface design, branding, and product design. She has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators New York, American Illustration, Adobe, the National Magazine Awards, Applied Arts, and 3×3 Magazine. 

Omar Mouallem

Omar Mouallem’s writing has appeared in dozens of titles across the globe, including WIREDm Rolling Stone, and Maclean’s. His stories have been recognized by the National Magazine Awards, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and the Mindset Award for Workplace Mental Health Reporting. In addition to writing, Omar co-founded two magazines, consulted on titles, and hosted the Alberta Magazines podcast. In 2022, he received an Emerging Artist Award from the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta.

Philip Cheung

Philip Cheung is a photographer based in Los Angeles. His photographs have been exhibited at venues across North America and Europe, such as the SFO Museum (San Francisco, USA), the National Portrait Gallery (London, UK), the Canadian War Museum (Ottawa, Canada) and the Pinchuk Art Centre (Kyiv, Ukraine).

He has been awarded grants by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council, and was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2018. 

The Overseas Press Club of America has recognized Cheung for his documentation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His work is held in the collection of Akkasah, Center for Photography at New York University in Abu Dhabi, the Canadian War Museum, and has been featured and reviewed in various publications, including Harper’s, the British Journal of Photography, Canadian Art, The Washington Post and TIME.

Ashley Okwuosa

Ashley Okwuosa is a reporter, researcher, and editor based in Toronto. Her stories on immigration, education, politics, and more have been published in Broadview, The Narwhal, The Local, TVO.org, The Boston Globe, and The Christian Science Monitor. Her work can be found at www.ashleyokwuosa.com.

Brandi Morin

Brandi Morin is an award-winning Cree/Iroquois/French multimedia journalist from Treaty 6 territory in Alberta. For the last 10 years Brandi has specialized in sharing Indigenous stories.

She is known for her clear-eyed and empathetic reporting on Indigenous oppression in North America. She is also a survivor of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls crisis and uses her experience to tell the stories of those who did not survive the rampant violence.

Her most notable work has appeared in publications and on networks including National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera English, the Guardian, NBC THINK, CNN, VICE, ELLE Canada, the Toronto Star, the New York Times, Canadaland, Huffpost, Indian Country Today Media Network, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network National News, and CBC Indigenous. Brandi won a Human Rights Reporting award from the Canadian Association of Journalists in April of 2019 for her work with the CBC’s Beyond 94 project tracking the progress of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action.

In July 2022 Brandi won two National Native American Journalism Awards for her work with Al Jazeera English and the Toronto Star via the National Native American Journalism Awards. 

In competition against media heavyweights The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN International and numerous others, Brandi’s series with Al Jazeera English Online won a top prize in the Feature Reporting category of the annual Edward Murrow 2022 awards.

Her feature won for its six-part series about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Brandi’s debut memoir Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising, became a national bestseller within days of its August 2, 2022 release. 

Julie Sobowale

Julie Sobowale is a freelance journalist and lawyer based in Regina. She spent her career working for independent and trade publications. She started her career at Progress Media as a business journalist and spent five years writing about arts and culture for The Coast, the leading alternative weekly newspaper in Halifax. Her journalism focuses on legal affairs, technology and diversity and inclusion. Her work has appeared in the Ottawa Business Journal, Alberta Views, the American Bar Association magazine, the Canadian Bar Association magazine and Canadian Lawyer. She is a board member for the Canadian Association of Journalists and Western Director for the Canadian Association for Black Journalists.

Her latest columns in the Canadian Bar Association National magazine can be viewed here. Her past work can be viewed on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Caroline Monnet

Born to an Anishinaabe mother and a French father, Caroline Monnet is from Outaouais, Québec, and now based in Montréal. After studying at the University of Ottawa and the University of Granada, in Spain, she pursued a career in visual arts and film. Her work is regularly presented internationally and can be found in prestigious museum, private, and corporate collections. Monnet has become known for minimalist yet emotionally charged work that uses industrial materials and combines the vocabulary of popular and traditional visual cultures with the tropes of modernist abstraction to create unique hybrid forms. She is represented by Blouin Division Gallery.

Wade Hudson

Wade Hudson specializes in portraiture. He celebrates his subjects’ joy and captures their vulnerability in an intimate fashion. The highly approachable Wade brings out the playful side of personalities — whether they’re everyday people, models or celebrities. In addition to his commercial work, he also specializes in fashion and beauty. Wade is a virtuoso of lighting technique, inside and outside the studio. He brilliantly illuminates a person’s complexion, bringing out the best in each of his subjects, in any environment. He describes his work as “honest and personal.”

Andrea Yu

Andrea Yu is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. As a generalist, her scope ranges from business and real estate to health, food and drink. But life and culture are where she got her start — as a section editor at Time Out Hong Kong, following the completion of a Master of Journalism degree from the University of Hong Kong. After returning to Toronto, Andrea worked as a copywriter at Hudson’s Bay and a staff writer at Foodism and Escapism magazines before going full-time into freelancing. She’s currently a contributing editor at Toronto Life and Maclean’s. Her writing has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Canadian Business. You can view her portfolio here and connect with her via LinkedIn or email. 

Winnie Truong

Winnie Truong is a Toronto based artist working with drawing and collage to explore ideas of identity, feminism, and fantasy along with a digital art, animation, and illustration practice. She has exhibited her artworks across Canada, the US and Europe with solo presentations at Volta New York Art Fair, Pulse Miami Art Fair and Art Toronto. Her artwork has been published by Hazlitt, Penguin Random House, W.W.Norton and Company and Rizzoli amongst others.

Katherine Takpannie

Emerging photographer Katherine Takpannie passionately reflects her Inuit worldview through her lens, emphasizing social accountability and unity. Despite facing challenging circumstances as a young Inuk, including intergenerational trauma and poverty, Katherine’s life took a positive turn after reclaiming her culture through the Nunavut Sivuniksavut program. She graduated with a 3.95 GPA and became a cultural ambassador, sharing her Inuit heritage through her art.

Katherine’s photography career began with the Art Gallery of Guelph in 2018, capturing the essence of Inuit culture and society in her exhibit “Getting Under Our Skin.” Since then, her work has been featured in various exhibitions, showcasing her commitment to highlighting Indigenous issues and advocating for her community.

Her proudest achievements include receiving the 2020 New Generation Photography Award and winning the SAW Prize for New Works, recognizing her talent as a young Canadian artist. Through her art, Katherine aims to raise awareness and initiate meaningful conversations about contemporary Indigenous experiences.

Kelly Boutsalis

Kelly Boutsalis is a Mohawk journalist from the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. Currently living in Toronto, she devotes the bulk of her work to highlighting Indigenous stories. Her byline has appeared in the New York Times, Toronto Star, Toronto Life, and the Walrus. She led the CBC Six Nations pop-up bureau earlier this year. She is also the Associate Programmer, International, Canadian features for the Toronto International Film Festival.

Molly Cross-Blanchard

Molly Cross-Blanchard (she/her) is a white and Métis poet, writer, and editor born on Treaty 3 (Fort Frances, ON), raised on Treaty 6 (Prince Albert, SK), and currently living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, cka Vancouver.

Molly has a BA in English from the University of Winnipeg and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Room, CV2, The Malahat Review, SubTerrain, The Puritan, Canthius, Grain, Quill & Quire, ndn country, and others. Molly’s poetry chapbook is I Don’t Want to Tell You (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2018) and her debut full-length book of poetry is Exhibitionist (Coach House Books, 2021). Molly’s areas of creative interest are intersectional feminism, shame, sexuality, body image, anxiety and depression, popular culture, settler-Indigenous relations, and romantic love.

Matthew James Weigel

Matthew James Weigel is a Dene and Métis poet and artist born and raised in Edmonton. Currently pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Alberta, he holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences. He is the designer for Moon Jelly House Press and his words and art have been published by publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Book*Hug, The Polyglot, and The Mamawi Project. Matthew is a National Magazine Award finalist, Nelson Ball Prize finalist, Cécile E. Mactaggart award winner, and winner of both the 2020 Vallum Chapbook Award and 2021 bpNichol Chapbook Award for his chapbook It Was Treaty / It Was Me. His debut full-length collection Whitemud Walking recently won the Alcuin Society Award for book design and is available now from Coach House Books.

Richard Van Camp

Richard Van Camp is a proud Tłı̨chǫ Dene from Fort Smith, NWT. He is the author of 26 books in 26 years, the most well-known of which is his 1996 novel The Lesser Blessed, which was adapted into a film by director Anita Doron in 2012.

In the past several years, Richard has been the Storyteller-in-Residence for Calgary Public Library and the Writer-in-Residence at the Metro Federation of Edmonton Libraries. He has also served as the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta, Yellowhead Tribal College, MacEwan University and the University of the Fraser Valley.

Brandi Bird

Brandi Bird is an Indigiqueer Saulteaux, Cree and Métis writer and editor from Treaty 1 territory. They currently live and learn on Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh & Musqueam land. Their work has been published in Catapult, The Puritan, Poetry is Dead, Room Magazine and others. They are a 4th year BFA student at UBC and live with their three cats: Babydoll, Burt and Etta.

David A. Robertson

David A. Robertson (he/him/his) was the 2021 recipient of the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. He is the author of numerous books for young readers including When We Were Alone, which won the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award and the McNally Robinson Best Book for Young People Award. The Barren Grounds, the first book in the middle-grade The Misewa Saga series, received a starred review from Kirkus, was a Kirkus and Quill & Quire Best Middle-Grade Book of 2020, was a USBBY and Texas Lone Star selection, was shortlisted for the Ontario Library Association’s Silver Birch Award, and was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award.

Roberston’s memoir, Black Water: Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory, was a Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire Book of the Year in 2020, and won the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction, as well as the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award at the 2020 Manitoba Book Awards. On The Trapline, illustrated by Julie Flett, won David his second Governor General’s Literary Award and was named one of the best picture books of 2021 by the CBC, The Horn Book, the New York Public Library, Quill & Quire, and American Indians in Children’s Literature. Dave is the writer and host of the podcast Kíwew, winner of the 2021 RTDNA Prairie Region Award for Best Podcast. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and currently lives in Winnipeg.

The Theory of Crows, Robertson’s upcoming poignant and evocative novel about the bonds of family and the gifts offered by the land, will be published in September 2022 by Harper Collins Canada. The Stone Child, the third novel in Robertson’s middle grade series The Misewa Saga, will be published in August 2022 by Penguin Random House Canada.

Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead (he/him) is an Oji-nêhiyaw, Two-Spirit member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks, 2017), Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018), and the editor of Love after the End: an Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (Arsenal Pulp 2020). Whitehead is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary (Treaty 7) where he is housed in the departments of English and International Indigenous Studies. 

Chyana Marie Sage

Chyana Marie Sage is nothing more and nothing less than a woman who dives into all aspects of life, ebbing and flowing with the painful, the beautiful, the gut-wrenching, and heart-aching moments that find us. There is beauty and lessons in all of it, and she welcomes it with open arms.

She completed her BA at the University of Alberta in English and Creative Writing and her personal essay “Soar” won first place in the Edna Staebler Essay Contest. It then went on to win the Silver Medal in the National Magazine Awards.She is Cree, Salish, and Métis. In her memoir, she is working through and overcoming intergenerational trauma directly stemming from the Sixties Scoops and the Residential School System. She also writes children’s stories.

She currently lives in New York City, writing her memoir and working on her Masters in Fine Arts at Columbia University, graduating in 2023. Post graduation, she aspires to become an Indigenous Creative Writing Professor and seeks to facilitate creative writing workshops in correctional institutions. She sees creative writing as a tool for healing, feeling the way writing has been pivotal for her in overcoming her own traumas. She hopes to share that lesson and help others work through and express their own unique experiences.

Sage is in the process of illustrating a children’s story and is seeking a publisher or agent for its release. In 2021, she published the first book in her poetry trilogy, Dear You. Sage’s works can be viewed on her website, and she can also be found on Twitter and Instagram.

Troy Sebastian (NUPQU ʔA·Kǂ AM̓)

Troy Sebastian |nupqu ʔak·ǂam̓ is a writer from the Ktunaxa community of ʔaq̓am. He is a doctoral student, Vanier Scholar and Sessional Instructor in the University of Victoria’s Department of Writing. His story “tax niʔ pikak̓— a long time ago” was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Short Story Prize and the 2019 Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. In 2020 he was selected as a Writer’s Trust Rising Star by Lynn Coady and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Troy’s story The Mission won the 2022 National Magazine Award GoldPrize for Fiction. His writing has appeared in Brick, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and The Walrus. He is represented by Rachel Letofsky at CookeMcDermid.

Carleigh Baker

Carleigh Baker is an author and teacher of nêhiyaw âpihtawikosisân and European descent. Born and raised on Stó:lō territory, she currently lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwəta (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.

Her debut story collection, Bad Endings (Anvil Press, 2017), won the City of Vancouver Book Award, and was also a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Emerging Indigenous Voices Award for fiction. Her short stories and essays have been translated into several languages and anthologized in Canada, the United States, and Europe. She was a 2019/20 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, where she also teaches creative writing. 

Julian Brave NoiseCat

Julian Brave NoiseCat, a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen and a descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie, is a writer and filmmaker currently based in the Pacific Northwest. A fellow of New America and the Type Media Center, his first book, We Survived the Night, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf. He is concurrently co-directing his first documentary, which follows the search for unmarked graves at the residential school his family was sent to in Williams Lake, British Columbia. NoiseCat’s work has been recognized with numerous awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, one of the largest cash prizes in journalism, which honours “excellence in long-form, narrative or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present American landscape.” In 2021, he was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders alongside the starting point guard of his fantasy basketball team, Luka Doncic.