Trans Voices Magnified Panel (MARCH 20th)

Candie Tanaka

Candie Tanaka is a multiracial trans writer, artist and librarian challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other while exploring archive and memory in a socio-political context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. Their first YA book, Baby Drag Queen was published with Orca Books in April 2023. They’ve also published work in Resonance: Essays on the Craft of Life and Writing with Anvil Press and This Will Only Take A Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction with Guernica Editions.

candietanaka.com
@candietanaka

Rowan Jette Knox

Rowan Jette Knox (he/him) is an award-winning writer and human rights advocate from Toronto, Canada. He, along with his family, share their story about the power of acceptance, understanding, vulnerability and unconditional love, in the hopes of normalizing the existence of LGBTQ+ families.

Prior to transition, Rowan was a 2019 Chatelaine Woman of the Year, a 2020 Woman of Influence, and a 2021 recipient of the Order of Ottawa. His work has been featured by several national and international media outlets, including CBC, BBC, The Today Show, CTV’s The Social, The Good Stuff with Mary Berg, O Magazine, and Upworthy. 

Rowan is the author of the two bestselling memoirs LOVE LIVES HERE and ONE SUNNY AFTERNOON. He lives in Toronto with his family and a coffee maker that never quits.

Skylar Kay

Skylar Kay is an Alberta-based poet and grad school dropout. Since releasing her debut collection, Transcribing Moonlight (Frontenac House, 2022), she has moved back home to Calgary where she looks for the magic in everyday life. Her debut collection was well-received, earning a shortlist nod for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Poetry, and won the Book Publishers Association of Alberta’s Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry.

Raziel Reid

RAZIEL REID’s debut young adult novel, When Everything Feels Like the Movies, won the 2014 Governor General’s Award for English-language children’s literature, making them, at 24 years old, the youngest ever person to win the prestigious award. When Everything Feels Like the Movies is inspired in part by the 2008 murder of gay and non-binary teenager Lawrence Fobes King. It was the first YA novel selected for inclusion on Canada Reads in 2015, where it came in second place. It was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult Literature, and for Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award. Published by Atom Books in the UK The Telegraph listed it as one of the best YA novels of 2016. Raziel’s second novel Kens was named by Publisher’s Weekly as a favorite YA book of 2021, and their third novel Followers was nominated for a 2021 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Raziel lives in Vancouver.

IG handle is @razielreid

Olivia Van Guinn

Olivia Van Guinn (they/them) is a Vietnamese-Canadian writer and poet from Northeast Calgary. They are a recipient of the Kathleen and Russell Lane Award from the University of Calgary. Their writing is often dark, absurd, and metafictional. Van Guinn’s writing is published or forthcoming from The Queen’s Quarterly, Existere, the /temz/ review, The Prairie Journal, and more; their debut novel is upcoming from At Bay Press. Van Guinn is currently the community manager for The Stygian Society, a small press in Montreal.

Instagram: @reeling_and_writhing
Website: oliviavanguinn.com