Sonnet L’AbbéSonnet L’Abbé is the author of two collections of poetry, A Strange Relief and Killarnoe, both published by McClelland and Stewart. In 2000, she won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35, and in 1999 won the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. L’Abbé has taught writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She reviews poetry for the Globe and Mail, and is currently doing doctoral work at the University of British Columbia.

The A B Series acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Gerry ShikataniGerry Shikatani's writing career reflects his passion for diverse elements of the human endeavour. He has published several books of poetry and a book of fiction while also writing on gastronomy and travel. Along with decades as a creator of visual poetries, he is an internationally known text-sound performance artist who has performed in Canada, the United States and Europe.

Born in Toronto, he is a Nikkei (of Japanese racial origin) and as a leading senior writer among visible minorities in Canada, has assisted minority writers through workshops and mentoring.

Paper Doors, an anthology of Japanese-Canadian poetry, published by Coach House Press in 1981, which he edited with David Aylward, pioneered attention to Asian-Canadian literature, a decade before the writing of Canadians of Asian background gained a wider public.

His books of poems include AQUEDUCT: poems and texts from Europe, 1979-87, a volume of 412 pages co-published by three presses, The Mercury Press, Underwich Editions, and Wolsak and Wynn (Toronto), an unprecedented publishing event in Canadian literature.

His most recent book is mortar rake glove broom basin sansui First Book, Three Gardens of Andalucía, poems, texts and images set in Spain The second volume of mortar… is in progress, set in Japan – primarily the Zen temple gardens of Kyoto.

His book Lake and other stories is currently being translated in Kyoto and Osaka.

Kokoro is for Heart, a collaborative film work was made with acclaimed experimental filmaker Phillip Hoffman and garnered First Prize Experimental Film at the 1999 Athens International Film Festival..

A respected mentor, he has been Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario, London and taught at Sheridan College and the creative writing departments of York University, Toronto and Montreal's Concordia University.

Based in Peterborough, he is currently completing a book of memoirs, reflections and essays on cuisine.

Libby Scheier wrote in The Toronto Star, “Shikatani is a poet’s poet: writing a delicate, intricate verse, cerebral and sensual at the same time; well-known and respected among poets but little known in larger writing circles or by the general reading public; disinterested in and apparently incapable of self-promotion; a genuine lover of art for art’s sake; in sum, as his publishers correctly state, `a master poet.’” (March 15, 1997)
see also:

Rachel Zolf on Gerry Shikatani at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/zolf/index.html

The A B Series acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.