Editors

Byron Rempel-Burkholder is an editor with Mennonite Publishing Network, working with a variety of books, periodicals and congregational resources. He edits the inspirational magazine Rejoice!, co-published by MPN and Kindred Publications.

Dora Dueck is the author of two books (Willie: Forever Young, and the novel, Under the Still Standing Sun) as well as many articles, stories and reviews. She has worked as editor in a variety of book and magazine projects, including Sophia magazine, and as associate editor of the MB Herald.

Doug Koop is a third member of the Winnipeg-based team, helping primary editors Byron and Dora connect with writers and promote the Northern Lights anthology. He works as editorial director of ChristianWeek

Contributors

Ray Aldred is a member of the Swan River Cree Nation in Alberta and assistant professor of Theology at Ambrose Seminary in Calgary. He chairs the Aboriginal Ministries Council of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and is on the board of the North American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies. An ordained minister, Ray is a contributing editor for Cultural Encounters, a theological journal of Multnomah Bible College, and a frequent speaker at conferences on cross-cultural ministry.

John Bentley Mays is an award-winning Toronto writer on architecture, visual art and design, and general topics in contemporary culture. He is architecture columnist for the Globe and Mail, columnist for the Catholic Register, and a frequent contributor to Azure, Canadian Architect, Canadian Art, and other periodicals. His books include Power in the Blood: Land, Memory, and a Southern Family and In the Jaws of the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression. He is currently at work on a book that profiles key shapers of modern Toronto’s culture and public life.

Bill Blaikie, MP, a minister of the United Church of Canada, represented Winnipeg’s Elmwood-Transcona federal riding in the Canadian Parliament from 1979-2008, serving numerous critic roles for the New Democratic Party (NDP), culminating in service as NDP House Leader and Parliamentary Leader. In April 2006 he was appointed Deputy Speaker of the House. In 2007 he was awarded Parliamentarian of the Year by his peers. He has been appointed adjunct professor of Theology and Politics at the University of Winnipeg, where he will reflect and write about the relationship between faith and politics.

Mark Buchanan is a pastor and the author of five books, most recently The Rest of God and Hidden in Plain Sight. He lives with his wife, Cheryl, and their three children on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Bruce Cockburn’s career as a singer-songwriter encompasses twenty-six albums, including twenty gold and platinum records in Canada. His numerous international awards include the Order of Canada, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and the Tenco Award for Lifetime Achievement. He has performed in countless concerts around the world since he released his first solo work in 1970.

Daniel Coleman lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he is a professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. He has published scholarly books on Canadian literature and a memoir called The Scent of Eucalyptus about growing up as the child of missionaries in Ethiopia. His book In Bed with the Word: Reading, Spirituality, and Cultural Politics is forthcoming in 2009.

Hugh Cook’s stories have appeared in Canada’s leading literary journals. He has published three books of fiction: Cracked Wheat and Other Stories, The Homecoming Man and Home in Alfalfa. In 1997 The Word Guild awarded Hugh the Leslie K. Tarr Award for outstanding contribution to the field of Christian writing. He is presently retired from teaching at Redeemer University College and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Michael Coren hosts the nightly Michael Coren Show on CTS television and co-hosts a daily radio show on CFRB called Two Bald Guys with Strong Opinions. He writes a weekly column for the Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg Sun newspapers and the London Free Press. He also writes for Catholic Insight, Women’s Post, the Interim and the National Post. He is the author of eleven books, including biographies of G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Leonard Desroches has published many articles and three books on the spirituality and practice of non-violence: Allow the Water; Love of Enemy: The Cross and Sword Trial; and Spiritualité et pratique de la non-violence. Len has been a trainer for Christian Peacemaker Teams and Peace Brigades International, and was a founder of the former independent newspaper Catholic New Times. A drywall taper by trade, he lives with his spouse, Anna, and son, Luc, in Toronto.

Lorna Dueck began her career in Christian broadcasting in 1994 and in 2004 founded a weekly news and current events television program called Listen Up TV. Its title was meant to say, "Listen to the world and look up." It is seen Sunday mornings on Global TV across Canada, and on numerous specialty channels. Lorna lives in Burlington, Ontario. She and her husband, Vern, have two grown children out exploring the world.

Catherine Edward lives and writes in rural Prince Edward Island. She has worked with both CBC Radio and Television, and as a television current affairs scriptwriter in Charlottetown, PEI. Her book, The Brow of Dawn, won the 2006 PEI Book Award and was shortlisted as Best Published Atlantic Book in the 2005 Atlantic Festival. A U.S. edition was released in February 2008 by Bunim & Bannigan Ltd. of New York. She and her husband have three married children and six grandchildren.

Susan Fish lives in Waterloo, Ontario. She writes for various charitable organizations and publications, and is currently interim communications coordinator for Conrad Grebel University College of the University of Waterloo. Susan is author of the novella Seeker of Stars, three books of Bible study curriculum, and more than sixty published articles. She is at work on her third novel.

John Fraser is an award-winning Canadian journalist and author of eight books, including the international bestseller The Chinese: Portrait of a People. He filled a variety of posts at the Globe and Mail between 1972 and 1987, including China correspondent and national editor. From 1987 to 1994, he was editor of Saturday Night magazine. Currently, he is Master of Massey College, affiliated with the University of Toronto. He is a committed Anglican and has served as Sunday school teacher and rector’s warden at St. Clement’s-Eglinton in Toronto.

Linda Hall is an award-winning mystery writer. Her latest novel—of fourteen so far—is Shadows at the Window, the second in a romantic suspense trilogy. Steal Away and Sadie’s Song were both nominated for Christy Awards and Dark Water was awarded Best Christian Mystery/Suspense Novel in Canada for 2006 by The Word Guild. She and her husband Rik live in New Brunswick and love to sail.

Maxine Hancock, PhD, is the author of many books, including Living on Less and Liking It More and Gold from the Fire: Postcards from a Prairie Pilgrimage. A recipient of the Leslie K. Tarr Award for her outstanding contribution to Christian writing in Canada and the Leading Women Award in Communications and Media, she has appeared frequently on Vision TV and the CBC, spoken and lectured widely on matters of faith, and is professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Spiritual Theology at Regent College, Vancouver.

Trevor Herriot is a Regina writer and naturalist. He is the author of River in a Dry Land: A Prairie Passage, which won the Writer’s Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize and was shortlisted for a Governor’s General Literary Award. His second book, Jacob’s Wound: A Search for the Spirit of Wildness, was shortlisted for the Writer’s Trust Award for Non-Fiction. His third book, Grass, Sky, Song: The Gift of Grassland Birds, will be published by HarperCollins in the spring of 2009.

Michael W. Higgins is Professor of English and Religious Studies as well as President and Vice-Chancellor of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. A native Torontonian, he is author and co-author of numerous books, including most recently Stalking the Holy: In Pursuit of Saint-Making; a documentarist for the CBC; papal affairs commentator for CTV; a columnist for The Catholic Register; and a regular contributor to the Literary Review of Canada and the Globe and Mail.

Joanne Gerber, Literary Arts Consultant for the Saskatchewan Arts Board, is a writer, writing instructor, and fiction editor. Her first book, In the Misleading Absence of Light, a short story collection, won three Saskatchewan Book Awards, the Jubilee Award for Short Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. She has collaborated with composer David L. McIntyre on a chamber opera and song cycle, and has written for stage. She is currently working on a novel, Like Manna, and living in Regina.

Bob Haverluck is a Winnipeg artist, educator, workshop leader, writer, and adjunct professor of Theology and Art at the University of Winnipeg. He has written and illustrated two books on conflict and peacemaking, Peace: Perspectives on Peace/Conflict and Love Your Enemies ... And Other Neighbours. His drawings have appeared in many publications, including Harper’s magazine and New Statesman. He has co-written A Prairie Mass with Anne Szumigalski, forthcoming from Coteau Books in 2009.

Sally Ito is a writer and teacher who has published two books of poetry, Frogs in the Rain Barrel and Season of Mercy, and a collection of short fiction entitled Floating Shore. She attends St. Margaret’s Anglican Church in Winnipeg, where she resides.

Anita L. Keith, a member of the Algonquin/Mohawk aboriginal community, is an instructor in Aboriginal Education at Red River Community College in Winnipeg, where she lives. She is author of For Our Children Our Sacred Beings, Sacred Children Sacred Teachers, and Sacred Learning. An ordained minister, she is a consultant with the North American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies and with My People International. Anita travels internationally, speaking to organizations and churches on aboriginal issues. She has three adult children and four grandchildren.

Sarah Klassen has authored six poetry collections, including A Curious Beatitude and Dangerous Elements, and two short story collections, The Peony Season and A Feast of Longing. Her work has appeared in literary magazines across Canada and she has received the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award, and the National Magazine Gold Award for poetry. She lives and writes in Winnipeg.

Joy Kogawa is a poet and novelist who divides her time between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Toronto, Ontario. Her semi-autobiographical first novel, Obasan, received numerous awards, including the 1982 Books in Canada First Novel Award. She is also the author of the novels Emily Kato and The Rain Ascends, five books of poetry, and two children’s books. She is a Member of the Order of Canada.

Mary Jo Leddy is a writer and activist. She was the founding editor of the independent national newspaper Catholic New Times and is the author of hundreds of articles on social and religious themes. She has also written seven books, including the best-selling Radical Gratitude. In 1997 she received the Order of Canada. For the last eighteen years she has lived and worked with refugees at the Romero House Community in Toronto.

James Loney is a reservist with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). He was part of a CPT delegation that was kidnapped in Baghdad in November 2006 and held hostage for four months. James has also served on CPT projects in the West Bank; Esgenoôpteitj, New Brunswick; and in Asubpeeschoseewagong, Kenora and Roberstville, Ontario. He lives in Toronto with his partner, Dan Hunt.

Preston Manning is former Leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament and author of The New Canada and Think Big: My Adventures in Life and Democracy. In 2005 he founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. He is a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute and a Companion of the Order of Canada. He lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Philip Marchand is film critic for the Toronto Star and author of several books, including Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, Ripostes: Reflections on Canadian Literature and Ghost Empire: How the French Almost Conquered North America. He lives in Toronto with his wife.

Poet, columnist, and book reviewer, Hannah Main-van der Kamp of Victoria, British Columbia, is an avid birder. Her four volumes of poetry include According to Loon Bay. She contributes regularly to both secular and Christian publications, including BC Bookworld and the Diocesan Post (Anglican). Her work has won several awards, including one from The Word Guild. A founding member of Victoria’s Imago Dei (contemplatives active in the arts), Hannah teaches the reading and writing of poetry as spiritual practice.

Ralph Milton is a retired writer and broadcaster whose career has taken him all over the world. He has written more than a dozen books, among them Angels in Red Suspenders, Julian’s Cell and The Spirituality of Grandparenting. He has received two honorary doctorates and is a co-founder of Wood Lake Publications. Ralph is married to the Rev. Beverley Milton. They live in Kelowna, British Columbia, near their grandchildren in whom they delight.

Ron Rolheiser is a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He grew up in Saskatchewan and taught theology and philosophy at Newman Theological College in Edmonton, Alberta. He is the author of eight books, including Forgotten among the Lilies, and most recently Secularity and the Gospel: Being Missionary to Our Children. His weekly column is carried in more than sixty-five Catholic papers worldwide. He currently serves as president of Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. www.ronrolheiser.com.

Father Thomas Rosica, CSB, was National Director of World Youth Day 2002 and currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network. A noted Scripture scholar and author, he has lectured widely and worked in interfaith relations in Canada since 1989. From 1994 to 2000, he was the Executive Director and Pastor of the Newman Centre Catholic Mission at the University of Toronto. He resides in Toronto.

Gloria Ostrem Sawai is a writer and editor. She grew up in Saskatchewan and now lives in Edmonton, Alberta. Her short story collection, A Song for Nettie Johnson (Coteau Books, 2001) won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2002. Her story "The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts" has been widely anthologized.

Peter Short is a minister of the United Church of Canada and author of Outside Eden: Essays of Encouragement. He has been in church ministry since 1977, serving churches on Quebec’s Gaspé Coast, in Yellowknife and Montreal, and currently in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He was moderator of the denomination from 2003 to 2006, when his articles in the United Church Observer won reader acclaim and church press awards.

R. Paul Stevens is Professor Emeritus of Marketplace Theology and Leadership, Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of many books, including Down-to-Earth Spirituality, Seven Days of Faith and Doing God’s Business: Meaning and Motivation for the Marketplace. He is married to Gail, who canoes from the bow; they have three married children and eight grandchildren.

Brian C. Stiller is president of Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto. He has also served as president of Youth for Christ and of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. He has authored ten books, includin Preaching Parables to Postmoderns and Jesus and Caesar: Christians in the Public Square. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, he currently resides in Toronto. He has been married to Lily for more than forty-five years.

Katya Szalasznyj grew up in the Good Spirit Lake district of Saskatchewan, an enclave of colourful Slavic settlement. Her rural life there was central to her development as a writer and archivist. She and her husband, Vasil, are founding members of Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, Saskatoon. She is the archivist for the Archdiocese of Canada, Orthodox Church in America, and is a member of the History and Archives Committee and the Canonization Commission of the OCA.

James A. Taylor has written seventeen books, from his first, An Everyday God (1981), to the latest, The Spirituality of Pets (2007). Although officially retired, he writes two columns a week for Okanagan Valley newspapers and distributes them worldwide by email. He was managing editor of the United Church Observer for thirteen years, and founding editor of the clergy journal PMC for fifteen. He co-founded the publishing house Wood Lake Books. He lives in Okanagan Centre, British Columbia.

Marie-Louise Ternier-Gommers, MTS, is the author of two books published by Novalis. Her first book, Finding the Treasure Within; A Woman’s Journey into Preaching, won a Catholic Press Association award in 2003. She has preached and been retreat facilitator in various Christian denominations, is writing and editing for two religious orders, and is now employed in pastoral ministry at her local Catholic parish. Mother of three adult children, she and her husband Jim live in Humboldt, Saskatchewan.

John Terpstra has published eight books of poetry, including Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems. An earlier work, Disarmament, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Awards. His poetry has won the CBC Radio Literary Prize, the Bressani Prize, and several Arts Hamilton Literary Awards. His memoir, The Boys, or, Waiting for the Electrician’s Daughter, was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where he works as a cabinetmaker and carpenter.

Although raised in a family of staunch atheists, Douglas Todd has gone on to become one of North America’s most decorated spirituality and ethics writers. A columnist for the Vancouver Sun, he has twice won the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year Award, the only Canadian to have received it. He is the author of several books, including the recent Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, and Brave Souls: Writers and Artists Wrestle with God, Love, Death and the Things That Matter. He lives in Vancouver.

David Waltner-Toews is a veterinary epidemiologist, essayist, poet, and fiction writer. He is the founding president of Veterinarians without Borders–Canada, and of the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health. Besides many scholarly papers, he has published half a dozen books of poetry, an award-winning collection of short stories, a murder mystery, and four books of non-fiction. The Globe and Mail has called him a "genuine polymath." When not working abroad, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

Diane Tucker’s poetry appears in many journals and anthologies, and in her two poetry books: Bright Scarves of Hours (Palimpsest Press, 2007) and God on His Haunches (Nightwood Editions, 1996). She also works as an English tutor and a freelance editor. She lives in Burnaby, British Columbia. Her website is www.dianetucker.info

George Whipple is the author of nine books of poetry, including The Peaceable Kingdom, "which explores the notion of Canada as a peaceable kingdom through our mythology, culture and environment," Footsteps on the Water, and Tom Thomson and Other Poems. He was born in New Brunswick, grew up in Toronto, and now lives in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Rudy Wiebe is the author of nine novels and several anthologies, story collections, and works of non-fiction. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) and A Discovery of Strangers (1994), and the Charles Taylor Prize for his memoir Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest. In 2003 he became an Officer of the Order of Canada. He lives in Edmonton.

Carolyn Whitney-Brown and her family were part of the L’Arche Daybreak community in Ontario from 1990 to 1997. Following L’Arche, she taught Religious Studies at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Continuing Education at St. Michael’s College in Toronto, and coordinated national projects for the Canadian Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, and the United Church of Canada. Carolyn recently edited the volume Jean Vanier: The Essential Writings. The Whitney-Browns live on Vancouver Island.

Molly Wolf is a freelance editor, indexer, and writer who lives with her three cats, Magnificat, Calvin, and Hobbes, in Gananoque, Ontario. She is a devout, if sometimes puzzled, Anglican and writes a weekly piece for email distribution called the Sabbath Blessing. Her books include Hiding in Plain Sight, which won the Catholic Press Association’s award for Best First Book in 1998, and White China: Finding the Divine in the Everyday.