Our alumni and students are the heart of the production process. Each team works on an aspect of emerge, from book production and marketing to the book launch and sales.
Production Editor
Abby Pelaez writes about food, Filipino diaspora, critiques of capitalism, and queer and platonic love from her home in Vancouver, Canada. Her work was published in emerge 22. She is a scholarship recipient of the 2022 Whistler Writer in Residence mentorship. Look for her new fiction and memoir in Room Magazine and Hungry Zine. Read more of her work at AbbyPelaez.com.
Fiction Editor
Leah Ranada was born in the Philippines. She moved to Canada in 2006, shortly after graduating from University of Santo Tomas in Manila. She attended The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in 2013. Her short stories have appeared in On Spec, Room Magazine, Santa Ana River Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, and elsewhere. Leah has brought her administrative and editorial skills to legal, settlement services, and academic workplaces. She lives in New Westminster and blogs at leahranada.com. The Cine Star Salon is her debut novel.
Speculative / YA Fiction Editor
KT Wagner organizes writer events, works to create literary community and is frequently spotted with knitting needles and yarn, muttering about the state of the world. KT graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2015 (Southbank 2013). A number of her short stories are published in magazines and anthologies. She’s currently working on a scifi-horror novel.
Non-Fiction Editor
Christina Myers is a writer, editor and former journalist. Her work, both fiction and non-fiction, has been widely published in magazines, anthologies, newspapers, and online, garnering a number of journalism and literary awards over the years. Her novel The List of Last Chances (2021) was longlisted for the 2022 Leacock Medal (winner to be announced in autumn 2022), and she was the editor of the anthology BIG: Stories About Life in Plus-Sized Bodies (2020). She is currently at work on her next novel and an essay collection, and is represented by Westwood Creative Artists. She continues to freelance part-time, is the co-organizer of a local reading series called Words in the Burbs, and is an alumnus of the Writer’s Studio at SFU Vancouver.
Fiction and Non-Fiction Edito
Dayna Mahannah is a freelance writer, journalist, and editor based on the West Coast of Canada. Her work has been published in Loose Lips Mag, HELD Magazine, Citrus Magazine, Adbusters, BeatRoute, and NUVO Magazine, among others.
She is the co-founder of SPiEL, a quarterly reading event that offers an approachable platform for emerging and established storytellers. SPiEL is also a podcast.
Poetry Editor
Raoul Fernandes lives and writes in Vancouver, BC. His first collection of poems, Transmitter and Receiver (Nightwood Editions, 2015) won the Dorothy Livesay Award and the Debut-litzer Award for Poetry in 2016 and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. He has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including the Best Canadian Poetry 2015.
emerge: The Writer's Studio Anthology 