Elizabeth Bachinsky is the author of six books of poetry, including Home of Sudden Service, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award. Real Grownup (Nightwood, 2026) is her latest. She lives in New Westminster, BC, on the traditional territories of the Qayqayt First Nation. She teaches creative writing at Douglas College. . Here’s a description of her latest book: “If Lorna Crozier, Susan Musgrave, Bronwen Wallace, and Joanne Arnott had been in the mosh pit at fifteen when Nirvana performed at the PNE Forum, this is what their poems might have looked like. In Real Grownup, Elizabeth Bachinsky plain-talks her way through the same gritty landscape that illuminated the poetry of her youth, but shows it from the perspective of a person at a waypoint in life, taking stock of the journey: birth, childhood, sex, loss, joy and death.” Louie Leyson was awarded the CBC Literary Prize in Nonfiction (2023), longlisted for the CBC Literary Prize in Poetry (2024), and is the recipient of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. You can find their works in Nimrod Journal, The Malahat Review, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.