Legacy Magazine - Past Contributors

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Past Contributors

Jordan Abel

Jordan Abel is an Aboriginal writer from Vancouver. He is currently working on a series of poems based on the ethnographic research of Marius Barbeau. In 2008, he graduated from the University of Alberta with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and he has been previously published in Transition, The Prairie Journal and Existere.

Stuart Adams

Stuart Adams writes for Alberta magazines and newspapers, and has self-published a children's book. His poetry has been broadcast on CBC Radio's Alberta Anthology. He's currently working on his second children's novel, plays harmonica for The Sprockets, and creates silver art and jewellry as part of Egress Studios.

Jane Cawthorne

Jane Cawthorne is an educator, writer, community activist and mother in Calgary, Alberta. She works with non-profit charitable organizations dedicated to social justice, environmental sustainability, equity and health.

Marty Chan

Marty Chan is a playwright, radio writer, television story editor, and young adult author.

James DeFelice

James DeFelice has been active in the professional theatre for more than five decades. Most recently he was the Festival Dramaturge for the Spring Festival of New Plays at the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre. He directed the Canadian premieres of Vincent in Brixton by Nicholas Wright at Theatre Network and Underneath the Lintel by Glen Berger for Shadow Theatre and Calgary’s One Yellow Rabbit Theatre. He wrote the award-winning screenplay for the Canadian classic film, Why Shoot the Teacher.

Dymphny Dronyk

Dymphny Dronyk is passionate about the magic of story and has woven words for money (journalism, corporate writing) and for love (poetry, fiction) for over 25 years. Contrary Infatuations, (Frontenac House 2007) was short-listed for two prestigious literary awards. A mediator by trade, Dymphny is the co-editor/publisher of Writing the Land – Alberta Through its Poets.

Marilyn Dumont

Marilyn Dumont's first collection won the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, presented by the League of Canadian Poets while her second collection won the 2001 Stephan G. Stephansson Award from the Writers Guild of Alberta. Most recently, she served as the 2005 writer-in-residence at Grant McEwan College, and presently she teaches Aboriginal Literature at the University of Alberta and Creative Writing at Athabasca University.

Emily Dutton

Emily Dutton was born and raised in Edmonton. Her images focus on hidden gems downtown and on the backroads of Alberta.

Caterina Edwards

Caterina Edwards’ latest book is Finding Rosa: A Mother With Alzheimer’s/ A Daughter’s Search for the Past, published by Greystone Books in September of 2008. She is also the author of The Island of the Nightingales, which won the 2000 Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Short Fiction, novelsThe Lion’s Mouth and Whiter Shade of Pale/Becoming Emma, many anthologized short stories and essays, the play Terra Straniera, produced in Edmonton and published by Guernica Editions in 1990 as Homeground, and the radio play The Great Antonio. Edwards co-edited two books of life writing by women: Eating Apples: Knowing Women’s Lives and Wrestling With the Angel. Caterina Edwards: Essays on Her Work, was the first book published by Guernica in its series on Canadian writers.

David Finch

David Finch is a consulting historian in Calgary who loves to collect stories of the West. He writes newspaper and magazine features and has authored more than 20 books.

Fil Fraser

Fil Fraser has produced three award winning feature films, Why Shoot the Teacher, Marie Anne and The Hounds of Notre Dame. He is the author of Alberta’s Camelot – Culture and the Arts in the Lougheed Years and a new biography, Running Uphill, the Fast, Short Life of Canadian Champion Harry Jerome, soon to be made into a feature documentary by the National Film Board of Canada. He is an adjunct professor of Communications Studies at Athabasca University and serves on the Board of Directors of Telefilm Canada. He is the past and founding Chair of the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Foundation. He is a member of the Order of Canada, and was inducted into the Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in October, 2005.

Malwina Gudowska

Malwina Gudowska is a Calgary-based freelance writer and the Calgary Editor for Vitamin Daily online magazine. Gudowska has worked as an associate editor for Calgary's Avenue and held the Alberta Reporter post for FASHION Magazine. Her work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, Western Living, and Alberta Venture.

David Haas

David Haas has extensive legal and military backgrounds. His commentary column has appeared regularly in the St . Albert Gazette since 1994, receiving a first place award for 2001 from Suburban Newspapers of America. He heads Sturgeon TALES, an oral storytelling group, mostly telling original stories.

Penney Kome

Penney Kome is an award-winning journalist and author. She has published six books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and spent twelve years as a national columnist. A former Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada, she is currently Editor of Straightgoods.ca, Canada's leading independent online newsmagazine.

Myrna Kostash

Myrna Kostash is an Edmonton-based writer of nonfiction. Her most recent book is Reading the River: A Traveller’s Companion to the North Saskatchewan River (2005). She teaches occasionally, lectures, and writes radio documentaries as well. She is the proud founder and now president of the Creative Nonfiction Collective.

Alice Major

Alice Major has lived in Edmonton, Alberta since 1981, working as a freelance writer with much experience in business writing. She has published five collections of poetry and one novel for young readers. She has served as president of the Writers Guild of Alberta and chair of the Edmonton Arts Council. She is currently on the national council of the League of Canadian Poets as past president. In July, 2005, she began a two-year term as poet laureate for the City of Edmonton.

Connie Massing

Conni is an award-winning writer working in theatre, film, radio, and television. Her commissioned adaptation of W.O. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid is slated for production by Theatre Calgary in September, 2009, and her book-length memoir about road trips which will be released by Brindle and Glass Publishing in 2010. Conni is currently the writer-in-residence at the Edmonton Public Library.

Anne McLellan

Anne McClellan served as MP for Edmonton Centre and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, is Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the University of Alberta, and is associated with Bennett Jones law firm.

Olenka Melnyk

Olenka Melnyk is an Edmonton freelance writer and editor, and a part-time editor for The Edmonton Journal. Her book No Bankers in Heaven: Remembering the CCF, published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson in Toronto, explored the grassroots history of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the forerunner of the NDP.

Melissa Morelli Lacroix

Melissa Morelli Lacroix is an Edmonton-based writer and teacher with an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her work has been produced on stage and radio and has appeared in Canadian, American and British print and on-line publications. She lectures on ekphrastic poetry, bibliotherapy, and maternal influences on reading and writing.

Patricia Myers

Patricia Myers is a writer and historian living in Edmonton. As well as writing the food column for Legacy, Pat has published in the fields of women’s history, aviation history, and the visual arts. She collects Canadian heritage cookbooks and food literature, and can often be found prowling antique malls and shows pouncing on gems to add to her collection.

Liz Nicholls

Liz Nicholls, who’s been the Edmonton Journal’s theatre reviewer lo these past two decades, is a native Albertan who came to arts journalism via academia. Her post-grad work was in Shakespearean stages and the late Shakespeare romances.

Bill Rankin

Bill Rankin is an Edmonton writer who has written on classical music, comedy and arts policy, among other subjects. He has been published in the Edmonton Journal, Legacy, Opera Canada, and on Gramophone Online. His articles appear on the websites of several well-known artists, including Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and Ian Tyson. He has a masters degree from the University of Toronto and a Graduate Diploma in Post Secondary Education from the University of Alberta.

Harry Sanders

Harry Sanders is a Calgary-based writer, historical consultant, and reference archivist at the Glenbow Archives. He appears weekly on CBC Radio One in Calgary as "Harry the Historian." Harry is currently working on a book about historic Alberta hotels.

Eunice Scarfe

Eunice Scarfe teaches creative writing in Canada and the US and is an award-winning short-story writer whose work appears in literary magazines and anthologies. She lives in Edmonton.

Carolynn Semeniuk

Carolynn Semeniuk has worked as a writer, editor, winery promoter, college instructor, and, most recently, as the mother of two children. In her spare time she hikes, runs marathons very slowly, and writes. She currently resides in Calgary with her husband, Corey, and children, Norah, Adam, and Holly.

Allan Sheppard

Allan Sheppard was born in Alberta, where he received most of his education and has spent most of his working life. He has worked in professional theatre production and administration, freelance broadcasting, alternative journalism, and provincial government public relations and communications, usually specializing in the arts, culture, and multiculturalism.

Allan Shute

In a previous lifetime, Allan Shute was editor and publisher of the legendary Edmonton Access Catalogue: The Most Complete Guide to Edmonton Activity.

Colleen Skidmore

Colleen Skidmore is Professor and Interim Dean in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta and editor of This Wild Spirit: Women in the Rocky Mountains of Canada (University of Alberta Press, 2006).

Stephen Slemon

Stephen Slemon teaches at the University of Alberta. His current research focuses on “criminality” in British India, and on the literature of mountaineering.

Ed Struzik

Ed Struzik is a writer/photographer who has focused on Arctic issues for the past 28 years. During his tenure as the 2006-2007 holder of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, he spent the better part of a year in the Canadian North investigating the impact that climate change is having on the environment, Inuit culture and the threats it poses to security and sovereignty.

Gloria J. Toole

Gloria J. Toole is a Calgary-based freelance writer.

Aritha van Herk

Aritha van Herk is a writer, teacher and public intellectual whose award-winning novels and essays have been published and praised nationally and internationally. She is the author of five novels, including most recently Restlessness. Her irreverent but relevant history of Alberta, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, won the Grant MacEwan Author's Award for Alberta Writing. That book frames the Glenbow Museum’s new permanent exhibition on Alberta history; Audacious and Adamant: the Story of Maverick Alberta, accompanies the exhibit.

Sandra Vida

Sandra Vida is a visual artist known for her multi-media art work, her dedication to other artists through Calgary's artist-run centres, and as an advocate for the arts at the regional and national level. She has been a speaker, panelist, performer, and organizer for many arts conferences, and her critical writing has been published in national magazines and artist catalogues. She was recently nominated for a Governor-General's award for her contribution to the media arts, and last year received the EPCOR Established Arts award at the Mayor's Luncheon for Business and the Arts for her dedication to the Calgary arts community.

Marliss Weber

Marliss Weber is a freelance writer from Edmonton. She writes regularly for SEE Magazine and teaches writing courses at MacEwan College and the University of Alberta as well as Speech and Drama at the Alberta College Conservatory. She has recently written a play about cyber bullying, Bullying Bytes, which served as her thesis for her MA in Communications. Her play will be touring junior high schools this fall.

Thomas Wharton

Thomas Wharton’s latest novel is The Shadow of Malabron, the first in a trilogy for younger readers, called The Perilous Realm. He lives in Edmonton with his wife and three children, and teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta.

Winter 2009
Complete Contents of Current Issue

After 14 years, Winter 2009 is our 56th issue of Legacy and our last.

As Legacy's publisher/editor/owner, I have been fortunate to work with remarkable people. My sincere thanks to our thoughtful associate publisher Gurston Dacks and encouraging business psychiatrist/music columnist Ron Chalmers. To talented, remarkable designer Mark Dutton. To patient general managers Mary Oakwell, Liz Grieve, and Yoko Sekiya; and determined ad sales manager Andrea Kopylech. And to two of the best, most sensitive associate editors, Eva Radford and Naomi Lewis. Thank you, also, to the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation for supporting school subscriptions and to Enbridge, Elly de Jongh, and Melcor Developments for public library subscriptions. To the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for editorial support. And to our committed advertisers and many loyal readers.

I have looked forward each issue to wonderfully written columns by Paula Simons, Sid Marty, Ron Chalmers, Laurie Greenwood, Johanne Yakula, Dorothy Field, Gordon Morash, and Patricia Myers. And to beautifully crafted prose and poetry by well-known and emerging writers alike.

But I have decided that Legacy's own story will conclude now. Indeed, it has been fun. Thank you all beyond words.

Barb Dacks, Publisher