Featured Contributors

Meet some of the most feared and revered writers from recent issues of Briarpatch…

  • Dave Bleakney

    Dave Bleakney

    Dave Bleakney is a member of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the national union representative for education (Anglophone). On matters of anti-capitalism, the dude abides.

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  • Fathima Cader

    Fathima Cader

    Fathima Cader is a writer, photographer, and law grad.

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  • Cynthia Dewi Oka

    Cynthia Dewi Oka

    Cynthia Dewi Oka is an Indonesian poet and single mama currently residing in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. In the past few years she has organized with the Breakthrough Mamas, Rhizome Movement Building Centre, 2010 (Anti-Olympic) Welcoming Committee and No One is Illegal. 

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  • Megan Hope

    Megan Hope

    Megan Hope is a health-care worker interested in social justice. She has been active in the campaign to stop Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s cutbacks of social services, and is a member of the Davenport-Perth Stop the Cuts Committee.

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  • Jane Kirby

    Jane Kirby

    Jane Kirby is an organizer, writer, circus enthusiast, reproductive justice advocate and unapologetic feminist living in Halifax. She is a former coordinator at the Saint Mary’s University Women’s Centre and has volunteered with Out of the Cold Halifax.

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  • Melina Laboucan-Massimo

    Melina Laboucan-Massimo

    Melina Laboucan-Massimo is a member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation. She has worked with a range of organizations including Redwire Media Society, the Indigenous Media Arts Group and the Indigenous Environmental Network. She currently works as a tarsands climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace.

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  • Robyn Maynard

    Robyn Maynard

    Robyn Maynard is a writer, radio journalist and community organizer based in Montreal, focusing primarily on issues of migrant justice, police violence and racial profiling. She is active with No One is Illegal and blogs at robynmaynard.wordpress.com.

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  • Russel Samuel Myers Ross

    Russel Samuel Myers Ross

    Russell Samuel Myers Ross belongs to the Tsilhqot’in Nation. He holds a master’s in Indigenous governance from the University of Victoria, and is now a sessional instructor at Thompson Rivers University in Williams Lake.

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  • Leanne Simpson

    Leanne Simpson

    Leanne Simpson is of Mississauga Nishnaabeg ancestry and is the author of Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. She is the editor of Lightening the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations and This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades, all published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing in Winnipeg.

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  • Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

    Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

    Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is an emerging filmmaker, actor, writer, and activist. Elle-Máijá is a graduate of Vancouver Film School’s acting program, and recently completed her bachelor’s degree in First Nations Studies at the University of British Columbia.

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  • Vernon Wilson

    Vernon Wilson

    Vernon Wilson is a Gitxsan First Nations person from the village of Kispiox, located in northwestern B.C. He holds an associate of arts degree from Thompson Rivers University and a creative writing diploma from the Surrey Writers’ School.

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