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Francis DambergerFrancis Damberger is an award-winning filmmaker who hangs his hat on a ranch in Tofield, Alberta, where he is the president of The Damberger Film and Cattle Co. Francis is a graduate of the BFA act-ing program at the University of Alberta and worked as an actor in film, TV and stage before turning his talents to filmmaking. His films have earned much critical praise and numerous awards, including four Genie nominations for his feature film, Solitaire. The film also earned Francis a Genie nomination for best original screenplay. Recently Francis acted as producer, associate director and second unit director on the epic English Canadian WWI film, Passchendaele.

Dave CournoyerDave Cournoyer is a writer, blogger, communicator, occasional media pundit, political watcher and proud lifelong Albertan. He studied political science at the University of Alberta and has served as vice president (external) of the U of A Students’ Union, chair of the Council of Alberta University Students, and communications coordinator for Alberta’s official opposition party. He is currently a communications officer for the United Nurses of Alberta and blogs at daveberta.ca.

Colby CoshColby Cosh joined Maclean’s in November as an assistant editor, blogger, and Edmonton correspon-dent. In 2003, as a senior editor of Alberta Report, he founded a pioneering blog at colbycosh.com and blazed a trail in the medium for other Canadian journalists. A former freelancer with a long curriculum vitae, he is a former National Post columnist and editorial board member and wrote a sports column for the Western Standard.

Rita EspeschitRita Espeschit was born in Brazil and landed on planet Canada in 2001. She has published many books for children, all of them written in the alien language known as Portuguese. She is also the author of staged plays, the screenwriter of videos, and the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Jabuti National Prize (the most prestigious literary prize in Brazil). Rita was Edmonton’s PEN Canada Writer in Exile for 2008/2009.

Minister FaustMinister Faust is an award-winning author and community broadcaster. His second novel, From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain, won the Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award and was the runner-up for the Philip K. Dick Award. His first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick, Locus Best First Novel and Compton-Crook awards, and placed on four top 10 lists for 2004. His journalism has been published in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Alberta Views, Unlimited, DRIN, Vue Weekly and elsewhere.

Kim CleggKim Clegg is a Motion FX designer with over 18 years’ experience in the industry and, along with his award-winning team at Rat Creek Design, specializes in motion graphics and design for broadcast television, including art direction, show packaging, compositing, 2D/3D animation and visual effects. He is currently working on Anash and the Legacy of the Sun-Rock, a half-hour television series combin-ing illustrated animation, live action greenscreened actors, digital effects and animated watercolour paintings.

Mark HarounMark Haroun is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His play for young audiences A Giraffe in Paris premiered at the Citadel Theatre in 2005 and was later produced in Montreal at Geor-die Productions. The play won the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Best Production for Young Audiences and was shortlisted for the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama at the Alberta Book Awards. Currently, Mark is a writer and senior story editor on CBC’s popular one-hour family drama Heartland.

Hart HansonHart Hanson is a Gemini Award-winning Canadian film and television writer and producer living in Los Angeles. In Canada, he wrote scripts for such shows as The Black Stallion, Neon Rider, Northwood, and North of 60, as well as the pilot for Traders (a series he co-created that won multiple Gemini Awards, including best writing for Hart). After moving to Los Angeles, he worked on several shows, including Cupid, Snoops, Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia. Hart created and wrote the pilot for Bones, which found a home on FOX and is in its fifth season.

Laurie GreenwoodLifelong Edmontonian Laurie Greenwood has been in the book business for over 30 years. An avid reader all her life, she, with her family, became co-owners of Greenwoods’ Bookshoppe in 1979. In 2008, she created Laurie’s Book Company whose primary focus is the advocacy of literacy, authors and publishing in Alberta and Canada. Laurie is involved in all aspects of the book business, from being a bookseller, jury member of numerous arts organizations provincially and nationally, and a weekly book columnist with CBC Radio and Global TV. In 2008 Laurie was shortlisted for the Grant MacEwan Literary Arts Award for her contributions to literature in Alberta.

Hiromi GotoHiromi Goto is the award-winning author of Chorus of Mushrooms and The Kappa Child. She’s also written a children’s novel, The Water of Possibility, and a collection of short stories, Hopeful Monsters. Her recent young adult novel, Half World, was published by Penguin Canada and is pending release in Poland, France, and the US. Her latest publication, Wait Until Late Afternoon, is a collaborative long poem written with David Bateman. She is the 2009/2010 writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

Curtis GillespieCurtis Gillespie’s books include a collection of short stories; The Progress of an Object in Motion (which won the Writers Union of Canada’s Danuta Gleed Award); two works of non-fiction, Someone Like That and Playing Through, and the recent novel Crown Shyness. He has won three National Magazine Awards for his writing on travel, sports, politics and the arts, and is the president of LitFest: The Edmonton International Literary Festival.

Andrew FoleyAndrew Foley is an Edmonton-based writer and editor whose credits include the graphic novels Parting Ways and Cowboys & Aliens, the comic book series Done to Death, and webcomics based on the television shows Jeremiah and Reboot.

Photo Credit: McMaster Photographers

Jack HodginsJack Hodgins was raised Vancouver Island and, until recently, taught fiction writing at the University of Victoria. He has written seven novels and three story collections, including Spit Delaney’s Island and The Invention of the World. Jack’s fiction has won the Governor General’s Award, the Canada-Aus-tralia Prize, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, among others. In July 2009, the Governor General ap-pointed him to the Order of Canada. His latest novel, The Master of Happy Endings, will be published in the spring of 2010. He and his wife Dianne live in Victoria, B.C.

Ava KarvonenAva Karvonen is founder of Reel Girls Media Inc. in Edmonton. She has produced more than 100 hours of content for multiple platforms, including TV, Web, and mobile phones. She created and pro-duced the serious game Murder or Suicide, more than 50 websisodes and vidcasts, 2 cross-platform TV series (Wild Files and Booked) and an online companion to an animated TV where users can create their own comics and stories (anashinteractive.com). She has been internationally recognized with more than 40 awards, many of them recently for anashinteractive.com, the companion to the ani-mated APTN series, Anash and the Legacy of the Sun-Rock, including the CFTPA Award for Best Con-vergent New Media, and a Japan Prize, the world’s most prestigious educational media award. Ava serves as an advisor to both nextMedia and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology’s (NAIT) Digital Interactive Media and Design program and sits on the new media committee of the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association (CFTPA).

Miles KonradMiles Everett Konrad is an award-winning writer with over 17 years’ experience developing commu-nications selling everything from social acceptance and behaviour change to potatoes and Pontiacs. A partner in the Edmonton-based creative company, SnoGlobe Communications Limited, Miles writes and creates powerful communications for clients big and small, including not-for-profit or-ganizations, independent retail operations, government departments and agencies, grocery chains, and professional sports teams.

Robert KroetschRobert Kroetsch, novelist, poet, essayist, and professor emeritus, is the author of some 25 books. His novels include Badlands and The Studhorse Man, which received the Governor General’s Award in Fic-tion for 1969. His newest volume of poetry, Too Bad: Sketches Toward a Self-Portrait, will be published in spring 2010 by the University of Alberta Press. He received the Order of Canada in 2004. He lives in Leduc, Alberta.

Mike LaidlawMike Laidlaw has been with BioWare for the past seven years, having jumped the fence from his role as a console editor in the reviewing circuit to work as lead writer on Jade Empire. Since then, he’s worked on Mass Effect, led the writing team on another unannounced project, and found time to give several presentations at Austin GDC on both design and narrative. Currently, Mike is lead designer for the Dragon Age franchise and just shipped Dragon Age: Origins, having lived up to the company’s tradition of epic stories, tactical combat and conjuring massive pillars of flame down upon the heads of enemies.

Richard HelmRichard Helm became the Books editor at the Edmonton Journal in May 2006, after several years of managing the newspaper’s sports and entertainment coverage. He is also a former TV columnnist and news and feature reporter.

Photo Credit: Darren Stone, Victoria Times Colonist

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Margaret Mardirossian A graduate of McGill University, Margaret Mardirossian founded Anaïd Productions in 1993. The company, with offices in Edmonton and Vancouver, has twice been listed as one of the world’s most influential independent production companies on Realscreen Magazine’s Global 100. As producer and executive producer, Margaret has overseen several award-winning, internationally recognized, top-rated factual television series, including the Gemini Award-winning series Taking It Off (Life Network), and X-Weighted (Slice), now going into its fifth season, as well as The Rig (OLN) and Family Restaurant (Food Network Canada), which garnered the 2009 Banff Rockie Grand Prize for Best Entertainment Program as well as the Rockie Award for Best Lifestyle/Information Program. Margaret is also executive producer of xweighted.com, a companion website for the television se-ries, which launched a national weight loss challenge on January 9, 2010.

Mack MaleMack is a software developer, entrepreneur, and social media guy. Always up to date on the latest trends and technologies, he loves sharing what he learns with others. He’s particularly passionate about his hometown Edmonton and does his best to expose everything it has to offer through his blog, Twitter account, and other online/social media. Mack was named one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2009 for his work in helping to build Edmonton’s online communities.

Sophie Lees Sophie is a local award-winning writer whose work has appeared in magazines such as Utne and Alberta Views. She has recently earned her MFA in creative writing from UBC, during which time her passion for creative non-fiction has dimmed (slightly) for the sake of writing short fiction. A graduate of the program, Sophie is now an instructor at MacEwan University’s Bachelor of Applied Communication in Professional Writing.

Conni Massing Conni is an award-winning writer working in theatre, film, radio, and television. Recent projects in-clude her commissioned adaptation of W.O. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid, premiered by Theatre Calgary in September 2009 and her book Roadtripping: On the Move with the Buffalo Gals slated for release by Brindle and Glass Publishing in spring 2010. Conni has worked as a story consultant on Taking it Off and Family Restaurant, both documentary series produced by Anaïd Productions. Conni’s writing has been recognized by AMPIA, the Academy of Cinema and Television, the Betty Mitchell Theatre Awards, and the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Theatre Awards.

Colin McGarrigleColin McGarrigle is the award-winning editor of Avenue Edmonton and has several years of magazine and newspaper experience both in Canada and abroad. Most recently, he was the executive editor of Avenue Calgary. Before this, Colin led such diverse publications as The Investor, Ireland’s leading financial magazine. He was also the editor of several other Dublin-based lifestyle and tourism magazines. Additionally, Colin has several years of newspaper experience in Canada, including periods as an editor with Osprey Media, Black Press, and Sun Media, where he garnered a number of Saskatchewan Weekly Newspaper Association awards and Canadian Community Newspaper Association awards. He has worked in all facets of media, including writing, photography, design and management.

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Josh MillerJosh Miller is an award-winning writer/producer and president of Panacea Entertainment in Edmonton. His long-form credits include the feature films Freezer Burn: The Invasion of Laxdale; Intern Academy; Dead Simple; Something More; and the MOW Stranger in Town. His television series credits include Anash and the Legacy of the Sun-Rock, Myth Quest, 2030CE, A Total Write-Off!, Great Cemeteries of the World and Mentors, which he created for Family Channel, where it ran for four seasons. Josh’s documentary credits include Catching the Chameleon; The Fringe: Acting Up; Seeds of Change: The Eco Story; and Belly Dance Man: From Canada to Cairo.

Don McMannDon McMann has worked with words since he began his career. He’s written everything from advertising copy to annual reports. He was an editor of a national trade magazine; a freelancer who wrote about the environment, cars, people and more; and he was a technical writer who developed training materials for the original Syncrude project. He spent years in corporate communications, where he nurtured his interest in making stories up. He’s been with MacEwan for over ten years. Don has a MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. He’ll graduate later this year with a PhD in creative writing from the University of Wales, Lampeter.

Patricia Misutka Patricia Misutka is a PhD student in organization analysis at the University of Alberta, School of Busi-ness. Her major areas of academic interest include environmental and regulatory issues. Patricia has also worked as chief of staff to Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel since his election in 2004 and also played key roles in both of his mayoral campaigns. Before joining the Mayor’s office, Patricia worked for several years in senior public relations positions including as executive director of the Glen-rose Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation and as senior director, western accounts for Porter Novelli Canada (Vancouver).

Scot MorisonScot Morison has told many stories over the years and has even been paid for them a few times. He has published one novel (Noble Sanctuary), a number of short stories, and dozens of articles and reviews. Since 1995, he has worked primarily in television and film, writing and story editing for Canadian series like Jake and the Kid and Mentors, developing movies and other long-form drama projects and, most recently, writing and directing documentaries for broadcasters like Bravo! and Omni. He has an MFA in creative writing from University of British Columbia and teaches in the Professional Writing program at MacEwan.

Michael PhairMichael Phair is currently Director of Community Relations, Office of the Vice President (External Relations), University of Alberta and is located in the University’s Enterprise Square building down-town. He is also an adjunct professor of education and a board member of the University’s City-Region Studies Centre. Previously, Michael was an elected member of Edmonton’s city council for 15 years and represented Ward 4.

Robyn ReadRobyn Read is the acquiring editor for Freehand Books, the literary imprint of Broadview Press located in Calgary, Alberta. She is a PhD candidate in the University of Calgary’s department of English, where she has taught canadian literature and introductory creative writing. Robyn is also a member of the U of C’s Creative Writing Research Group, and she sits on the planning committee for the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs Founding Convention.

Gail Sidonie SobatGail Sidonie Sobat is an award-winning author of six books for young-adult and adult audiences. She is the creator and long-time coordinator of YouthWrite and WordsWorth (camps for kids who love to write), she is an adjunct professor in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education, and she has been writer-in-residence for a number of institutions, including Queen’s University and the Canadian Authors Association. Gail’s work with teaching colleagues on the Legacy Project, a high-school program addressing the gulf between aboriginal and non-aboriginal students, garnered her a co-nomination for the Governor General Excellence in Teaching History Award. Her newest novel, Gravity Journal, is a 2009 White Pine Honour Book and a Moonbeam Gold Award winner.

Gloria SawaiGloria Sawai has been writing, on and off, since she was in fifth grade, when she wrote a novel. More recently, her stories have appeared in anthologies in Canada, the US, England, Spain, Mexico, Denmark, and Japan. In 2002, her book A Song for Nettie Johnson won the Governor General’s award for fiction in English. She lives in Edmonton.

Dr. Rey RosalesRey Rosales (PhD in Journalism, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) is the associate dean at the Centre for the Arts and Communications at Grant MacEwan University. He is an award-winning educator. He previously taught as a tenured communications professor in Chicago. He received numerous journalism fellowships, which include Fulbright, the American Press Institute (API) fellowship, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) fellowship, and the National Associa-tion of Television Program Executives (NATPE) fellowship, among others.

Dr. Peter Roccia Dr. Peter J. Roccia combines 14 years of experience teaching English literature, grammar, rhetoric, editing, business writing, and popular culture at Grant MacEwan University with 15 years of free-lance writing and editing. His work has been featured in Avenue Edmonton, Edmontonians, and Comic Talks 2005, and he has appeared as a regular pop culture commentator on movies, rhetoric, and the TV series Smallville for ACCESS Television’s Media Sense program.

Thomas TrofimukThomas Trofimuk’s first novel, The 52nd Poem, won the George Bugnet Novel of the Year Award and the City of Edmonton Book Prize in 2003. His second novel, Doubting Yourself to the Bone, was named one of the Globe and Mail’s top 100 must-read books for 2006. His third book, Waiting for Columbus, was released in August 2009 in the US and Canada, and will be published in the UK, Serbia, Poland and Brazil in 2010. Thomas writes on a regular basis for his own website: “writer, gardener, failed Buddhist” at thomastrofimuk.com.

Shirley VercruysseShirley Vercruysse is a partner in Calgary-based Burns Film Ltd. with writer/director Gary Burns. Her first collaboration with Burns was on waydowntown, which won the Toronto City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and was named the Best Canadian Film of 2000 by the Toronto Film Critics Association. In 2006, Shirley produced the Genie Award-winning Radiant City, a feature documentary written and directed by Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown. Radiant City opened at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and was named one of Canada’s Top Ten Films for the year. Her additional credits include, “spiritual advisor” - a.k.a. consulting producer - on the cult hit Fubar; consulting producer on A Simple Curve, (2005); producer of Comeback Season (2005); producer of The Oldest Basketball Team in the World (2006); executive producer of Immigrant, (2006); producer of The Secret of the Nutcracker (2007); line producer for television pilots Easton Meets West and Wild Roses (2007); line producer of My Rona Home, Calgary Edition (2009). Shirley is currently producing on the feature films Fubar II; Waska (First Snow), a.k.a. Angel’s Crest (2009) and Gary Burn’s and Jim Brown’s next collaboration, The Future is Now!

Aritha van Herk Aritha van Herk is a university professor and professor of English at the University of Calgary as well as a writer focussed on literature and material culture. Her first novel, Judith, received the Seal First Novel Award in 1978. Her second novel, The Tent Peg, appeared in 1981 and her third novel, No Fixed Address, was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for fiction in 1986. Places Far From Elles-mere, a geografictione, examines the conjunction of geography, autobiography, and reading from the perspective of Anna Karenina and Ellesmere Island. Restlessness, a fictional examination of con-temporary melancholia, is set in the Edwardian gloom of the Palliser Hotel in the picaresque heart of Calgary, Alberta. Her critical and non-fiction works, A Frozen Tongue and In Visible Ink, are concerned with questions of reading and writing as integral to critical thought. Her irreverent but relevant his-tory of Alberta, Mavericks, won the Grant MacEwan Author’s Award for Alberta Writing.

Karen Unland Karen Unland is the editor of the Edmonton Journal’s website, edmontonjournal.com. She started at The Journal in 1997 and worked as a reporter, assistant city editor and assignment editor before moving to the Web in 2007. She was nominated for a National Newspaper Award in 1998 for a feature on a boy battling cancer. She has a BA in Canadian Studies from the University of Alberta and a Master of Journalism degree from Carleton University.

Leslie VermeerLeslie Vermeer has been working as a writer and editor for more than 20 years. She teaches Professional Writing at MacEwan and is currently a member of the board of NeWest Press. Leslie is about to complete her doctorate in the sociology of education, examining relationships between literature and social structure in high school English classrooms.

Photo Credit: Trudi Lee Photography

Sheng XueSheng Xue grew up in Beijing. She moved to Canada soon after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Sheng Xue is a member of The Independent Chinese PEN Center and also a member of PEN Canada. She is North American correspondent of Deutsche Welle (Voice of Germany) and Canadian correspondent of Radio Free Asia. In 2000, she won The Canadian Association for Journalists Award for Investigative Journalism and the National Magazine Award for an investigative report on the lives of Chinese boat refugees published in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s. She is the first Chinese Canadian to win such prestigious awards. In 2005, she won The National Ethnic Press and Media Council for Journalism and Media Award. In 2001, Sheng Xue investigated China’s most prominent smuggling case and published a book (in Chinese), Unveiling the Yuan Hua Case, which soon became a bestseller in Chinese communities outside China and created shock waves both inside and out-side China. China’s Propaganda Ministry immediately banned the book. A collection of Sheng Xue’s poems, Seeking the Soul of Snow, was published in January 2008 by United Writers Press. The poetry book has also been banned in China. United Writers Press published a collection of Sheng Xue’s essays Lyricism From a Fierce Critic in August 2008. Sheng Xue was writer-in-residence at Carleton University in 2007. She was writer-in-residence at McMaster University for the winter of 2009. She currently is Edmonton’s Writer in Exile for 2009/2010.

Rudy WiebeRudy Wiebe is widely published internationally and the winner of numerous awards, including two Governor General’s Awards for Fiction for The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) and A Discovery of Strangers (1994). He is the author of 9 novels, 4 short-story collections, and 10 non-fiction books. His latest publications include a novel of the historical Mennonite diaspora Sweeter Than All the World (2001); the children’s book Hidden Buffalo (2003) based on a Cree creation legend and illustrated by Michael Lonechild; an autobiography, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest (2006), which won the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction in 2007; and the biography Big Bear in the Extraordinary Canadians series (2008). He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and lives in Edmonton.

Thomas WhartonThomas Wharton’s first novel, Icefields (1995), won Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book, Canada/Caribbean division. His second novel, Salamander (2001), was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Roger’s Fiction Prize. Both novels have been published in other countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, the UK, the United States, and Japan. A collection of short fiction, The Logogryph, was published in 2004 by the Gaspereau Press, and won the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction at the 2005 Alberta Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the IMPAC-Dublin Prize. He is currently writing a trilogy of fantasy novels for younger readers, The Perilous Realm. Thomas lives in Edmonton, where he is an assistant professor of English at the University of Alberta.

Photo Credit: Andrew Rurak

Evaluate What Happens Next? – The Future of Story

Please take a few minutes at the end of the conference (or at the end of your attendance) to give us your reactions to the conference. We will use your comments to improve next year’s event. Please hand the form to one of the volunteers or drop it off at the registration desk. Overall, this conference was:

Excellent Good Average Fair Poor Comments: ______________________________________________________________________________ Please give us your feedback, based on the following scale:

5=Strongly Agree 4=Agree 3=Neutral 2=Disagree 1=Strongly Disagree My awareness of the School of Communications increased. 5 4 3 2 1I learned something new at the conference. 5 4 3 2 1I will be able to apply what I’ve learned. 5 4 3 2 1I had a great opportunity to network. 5 4 3 2 1The registration fees were appropriate. 5 4 3 2 1I received value for my money. 5 4 3 2 1 What specific sessions were most helpful? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ How could the sessions be improved? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What future topics or speakers would interest you? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Other comments or suggestions? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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