Culture Chats sincerely acknowledges the contribution of Visiting Instructors and Authors in making this Intercultural Women’s Writing Program a success. Thank you for your continued support.

Effie Klein

Effie has worked in television newsrooms (BCTV, CKVU, Global and CTV) since 1987 as an editor, associate producer, documentary writer/producer, and online content producer. She has received awards for some her documentaries and some of her editing work, the most recent of which include an RTDNA in 2012 and a Webster in 2018. She previously taught journalism at BCIT. She is Chair at Langara College and Editor at Global TV.

Brie Wells

Brie is a writer, author, storyteller She writes stories for people who enjoy the magic that connects us. Stories of love, loss, betrayal, and beauty. Stories that are as complex as we are.

Erica Thorkelson

Erika is a freelance journalist and writer of fiction and creative non-fiction whose work has appeared in local and national publications, including the Walrus, Chatelaine, Maisonneuve and Room Magazine. Her areas of interest span broadly across arts and culture, with a specific interest in film, television and theatre. But she’s mostly just interested in telling a good story. She has been a regular contributor of arts and culture writing to the Vancouver Sun and Edmonton Journal as well as a host and operator on The Storytelling Show on Vancouver Co-op Radio.

Shauna Paull

Shauna Paull is the author of roughened in undercurrent (Leaf Press, 2008). A well-respected poet, educator and community advocate, she completed her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. She has led creative writing workshops at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Deer Lake Park, Burnaby, and for many different organizations in Vancouver. New work is published in Forcefield: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia (mothertongue, 2013) and is forthcoming in In All the Spaces: Diverse Voices In Global Women’s Poetry by Authorspress, New Delhi, India in the Fall of 2019.

Dr. Anna Griffith

Anna supported Culture Chats participants in presentation techniques and voice projections. Her performance work has focused on movement-based theatre and interdisciplinary art practices for social change. Her research started with intercultural theatre in Canada, exploring how people negotiate intercultural positions as Canadians through theatre performance. In her doctoral work she focused on physical practices (yoga and martial arts) as other ways we express our cosmopolitan identities and through which I critiqued the ways whiteness and privilege are enacted.

Seema Ahluwalia

Seema Ahluwalia is a Sociologist and she conducted a workshop on the theme of ‘Telling Our Stories with a Sociological Imagination’. Seema’s teaching, scholarship and activism is directed towards inclusion and peaceful co-existence. Her work is embedded in partnerships with members of diverse communities in support of Indigenous cultural survival and resurgence. A key aspect of Seema’s lifework is building bridges of understanding across the diverse networks of people who now live in the unceded territories of “Turtle Island”.

Dr. Hajera Rostami

Hajera  teaches counselling and psychology. In her workshop she explored the theme of Identity, integration, resilience and coping for participants. She facilitated a discussion among the participants as to how they are understanding and incorporating these different themes into their lives and writing.

She was born in Afghanistan and became a refugee at the age of 12. In 1996, based on her academic excellence, she was selected by the World University Services of Canada to settle in Canada. She is a registered psychologist in private practice and a faculty at Douglas College.

Dr. Nilofar Shidmehr

Nilofar Shidmher, PhD, MFA, is a creative writing-informed research scholar and a bilingual writer and poet. Nilofar’s poetry and short stories have been featured in many Canadian and Iranian literary magazines including The New Quarterly, Room, The Danforth Review, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Zaman (Time), and Ava-ye-Tabiid (The Voice of Exile). Dr. Shidmehr is a scholar of arts-informed research and one of the pioneers of poetic inquiry as a methodology of research. She has made several scientific contributions in form of journal papers and book chapters in this field.

Zahida Rahemtulla

Zahida is an emerging writer of fiction and theatre. She studied Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University in New York and Abu Dhabi, and currently works in Vancouver’s immigrant and refugee non-profit sector. Her play-in-progress, The Wrong Bashir, was recently selected as a national finalist for Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre’s MSG program and is in development at the Playwrights Theatre Centre.

Miriam Matejova

Miriam Matejova is a writer and researcher. Her creative writing often explores issues of immigration, displacement and belonging. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Her Circle, The Inconsequential and several travel magazines. She is one of the contributors to Caitlin Press’ This Place a Stranger: Canadian Women Travelling Alone, and an editor of the Project Nightingale literary journal. She is editor of the book ‘Wherever I find Myself, an Anthology of Canadian Immigrant Women’.

Gary & Sandra Wilson

Gary and Sandra are Owners | Publishers of the Print & Online Magazine, ‘What’s On! Burnaby’

Mike Larsen

President of FIPA, BC freedom of information and privacy association