OUR TEAM
Adriana Oniță, Founder & Creative Director
Adriana Oniță is a poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor, and publisher. She was awarded the Canadian Literature Centre Poetry Prize in 2019, and was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2021. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Misremembered Proverbs (above/ground press, 2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). Her multilingual poems have been published in CBC Books, The Globe and Mail, Tint Journal, Glass Buffalo, filling Station, The Ex-Puritan, In:cite, The Polyglot, Imaginations, Transcultural, and The Humber Literary Review. She is the founding editor of The Polyglot, and the editorial director of the Griffin Poetry Prize. She lives between Edmonton and Sicily. Discover more of her work at adrianaonita.com.
Catalina Morales Vélez, Marketing & Communications Director
Catalina Morales Vélez is a creative non-fiction writer who lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta. A native of Colombia, she depicts in her work common places, situations and scenarios filled with magical realism. Despite her work being mainly rooted in words, her creations come to life in other mediums like drawing, the 9th art–comics, stop-motion, among others.
As a child, she always loved to hear and tell stories, an appetite that soon evolved into a profession as she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication at the North Catholic University. This parallel to diplomas in Marketing and Advertising. Plus, a Graduate Diploma in Urban Communications from Pontificia Bolivariana University.
Catalina is a member of the Writers Guild of Alberta, and her work has been featured in Colombia, Canada, and U.S.A. magazines. She is currently working on her first manuscript and continuously supports literary initiatives worldwide.
Find her at catalinamoralesv.com and @catalinashineinc
Ewa Kolacz, Content Curator & Magazine Managing Editor
Ewa Kolacz grew up in Poland and now lives in St. Albert, Alberta. She is a retired IT professional, who has always been interested in languages, both computer and human—and can speak a few of each. Ewa is a member of the Saint City Writers writing group and published her works in the group’s numerous anthologies. Her writing has also been published in Issue 9 of The Polyglot Magazine and in Volume Two of the Capital City Press (CPP) Anthology and was featured on the CCP Anthology Volume Two Podcast. Ewa has done the technical layout and design of the Saint City Writers’ anthologies as well as the last few issues of The Polyglot Magazine.
Maria Teodora Barbu, Innovation & Development Facilitator
Maria Teodora Barbu is a self-published author of her debut, limited-run chapbook, The Circle’s Cycle. Her work has been published in The Polyglot Magazine and several Stroll of Poets Anthologies. She was a Top 20 Finalist for Poetry Moves on Transit in Fall 2018, and has been featured as part of the Edmonton Poetry Festival in 2019. She also received a partial scholarship to participate in the 2018 Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, where she studied under accomplished artists including Arthur Flowers and Denise Duhamel.
Maria is fascinated by the poetry and art that lives in this evolving space of conscious Romanian- Canadian identity. She is interested in the power of poetry and art to hold space for the sacredness of our world. She strives to create pieces that rumble yet calm, that awaken and inspire, that call us to connect to our inner flames and to each and one another.
Tāriq Malik, Community Catalyst & Writer in Residence
Vancouver-based author Tāriq Malik has worked across poetry, fiction, and art for the past four decades to distill immersive and compelling narratives that are always original. He writes intensely in response to the world in flux around him and from his place in its shadows. His published works, including Rainsongs of Kotli (TSAR Publications, short stories, 2004), Chanting Denied Shores (Bayeux Arts, novel, 2010), and now Exit Wounds (Caitlin Press, Poetry, 2022), challenge entanglements in the barbed wires of racism and cultural stereotyping in art, the workplace and across societies.