In Halfling Spring>/i>, a series of notes unfolds the dance of desire versus trust through a long season of actual and metaphorical springtime. Award-winning poet Joanne Arnott explores love, intimacy, and family, with a focus on electronic connections (internet love). Transiting Canada from Victoria to Iqaluit, and transitioning from virtual to real (fantasy to reality), she inspects the realms of miscegenation and love in a class conscious and cross-cultural context, revealing en route the many ways that our deepest connections unveil the depths of old pain. Optimistic and playful, romantic and mythic, affirming embodiment, this process of poetic revelation shows all the dirty tricks of love.

Joanne Arnott (born 16 December 1960 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Canadian Métis writer.Arnott's works are intimate with an activist slant, exploring the issues faced by a mixed-race girl and woman in poverty, the family, danger, love and childbirth. She writes about these topics from personal experience, as a Métis and a mother of six. She has conducted workshops across much of Canada, and in Australia, including a recent series at the Carnegie Centre, sponsored by SFU.She received the Gerald Lampert Award for her 1991 collection of poetry Wiles of Girlhood.Arnott lives in British Columbia with her family. She is a founding member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast, and The Aunties Collective. She has served on The Writers Union of Canada National Council (2009), The Writers Trust of Canada Authors Committee, and as jury member for the Governor General's Awards/Poetry (2011).

Joanne Arnott's profile page

Leo Yerxa was an award-winning writer, illustrator and artist. His first book, Last Leaf First Snowflake to Fall, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Illustration and Ancient Thunder won the Governor General's Award and many other accolades. Leo was born on the Little Eagle Reserve in northern Ontario. He studied graphic arts at Algonquin College in Ottawa, fine arts at the University of Waterloo, and worked with Tom Hill, a respected figure in Indigenous art in Canada. Leo was the first Indigenous person in Canada to design coins for the Royal Canadian Mint incorporating Indigenous design elements and First Nations athletes (Series IV 1975 Olympic Coins, Montreal Olympics 1976). A set of his murals can be seen at the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre on the Rainy River First Nations National Historic Site in Ontario. Leo provided illustrations for Halfling Spring by Joanne Arnott. He passed away in 2017.

Leo Yerxa's profile page

• Short-listed, Pat Lowther Memorial Award

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