About Our Contributors

Alberto Cristoffanini Benavente is a Chilean writer, who has lived half of his short life in Vancouver, Canada. There, he came across spoken word and became involved with the techniques and philosophies of a poetry out loud. He has been involved in UBC Slam and the Vancouver Poetry Slam, published in Tandem (Vol. 2), and is currently finishing a degree English and Spanish at UBC.

Kim Cai is a third year student planning to double major in psychology and visual arts.

Harry Chiu is a third-year student planning to major in Honours Sociology. He enjoys poetry and skiing in the mountains around Vancouver.

Brooke Cooney is a fourth year student double majoring in English literature and psychology, and is planning to further study education. She enjoys nature photography and is inspired by the wilderness of BC. Her other hobbies include running and make-up artistry.

Sonja Cvoric is a third year English Literature student but a new recruit to UBC Arts. She spent the last year in England, an experience made possible by UBC’s Go Global Exchange program, where her travels and academic soul searching made her realize she loved her English electives more than any of the Science courses she was doing for her degree. Since returning to UBC this year she has taken on a fresh approach to life and learning and is loving every minute of it.

Cecily Downs is a third-year English Honours student who immigrated to Vancouver from Seattle. She hopes to add creative writing to her list of majors next year and is currently working on several children’s novels.

Sara Dueck is a second year student in the English Honours program. She moved from Southern Alberta to Vancouver in 2012, and she still gets snarky whenever someone here complains about the cold or the wind.

Jason Fernando is a 3rd-year History Honours student with a tortured soul and a facetious approach to short-bio writing. Major interests include space exploration and the communication of science by artistic and interdisciplinary means.

Reuben Jentink is a third year English honours student who likes running, and reading. He often likes to walk and read. But he knows better than to run and read.

Mo Lawrence grew up in Squamish, British Columbia. He studies in UBC’s English Honours program.

Kelly O’Connor is a fourth year English honours student also doing a French minor. She uses her English education to think critically about the role of language (and languages) in society and culture, and is always seeking a greater understanding of international perspectives. Last year she studied in Dublin, a UNESCO World City of Literature, and worked at the Juno Beach Centre, the Canadian museum on the D-Day landing beaches, in Normandy, France. All things going as planned, she’s off to Ottawa in January to do a co-op term at Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development Canada.

Konstantin Prodanovic is a third year student in English Honours and Political Sciences. He is currently working on his faculties as a writer while developing a solid photography portfolio in the meantime. He plans to pursue a career in journalism and hopes that print media still exists when he graduates in the unforeseeable future.

Katie Selbee is a third-year English Honours student who has recently taken to writing verse: a habit that, like taking to drinking, is distracting, absorbing, dissatisfying, and the source of deep regrets. She graduated from the UBC Farm’s Practicum in Sustainable Agriculture this fall and is interested in the many ways in which art and agriculture intersect.

Talia Varoglu is a third-year double major in English Honours and German. She intends to pursue American contemporary and Indigenous literature, and plans ultimately to return to UBC as a professor after graduate studies in Europe and the United States.