Poet, author, and public speaker Valerie Mason-John (a.k.a. "Queenie") highlights issues of the African Diaspora and the Black, female, Queer identity and resists the currently existing overt and covert forms of colonialism through her fierce and brave writing. She is the author of eight books. Her debut novel, Borrowed Body, won the 2006 Mind Book of the Year Award. She co-edited the award-winning anthology, The Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry and co-produced blackhalifax.com. She lives in Vancouver. Find her online at valeriemason-john.com.

Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, at the beginning of the 1960s, George Elliott Clarke is a seventh-generation Africadian. He has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry and prose, including Whylah Falls and Execution Poems, an acclaimed novel George & Rue, and the celebrated opera, Beatrice Chancy. His many awards include the Governor General's Award for poetry and the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award.

"[T]he wide range of Mason-John's vision ... traverses history, geography, and culture.... [Her poetry] is significant for its reappraisal of our collective past, which so often overlooks or writes over marginalized voices and experiences. [Mason-John is] explicit in calling out a hypocritical Canadian multiculturalism that pays lip service to inclusion while simultaneously entrenching systemic biases and processes that maintain a racist and exclusionary status quo." [Full review at https://quillandquire.com/review/the-response-of-weeds-a-misplacement-of-black-poetry-on-the-prairies/ ] -- Steven W. Beattie -- Quill & Quire, 20200420

"This poetry collection grabs you... Readers are confronted with the violence of the Black experience, from the haunting spectre of slavery to the current and ongoing terrorizing of the Black diaspora at the hands of the police. All of the messy, the painful, the enraging -- what we're conditioned to believe as shameful -- is laid bare for the readers and brought to the fore. Many of these accounts traverse various places -- whether in the U.K., the U.S., or Canada -- and the bluntness and force of her words arrest you." [Full article at https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/book-review-i-am-still-your-negro-by-valerie-mason-john] -- Junie Desil, Vancouver Sun -- 20200831

Included on CBC Books's list of top Canadian poetry of the year in December 2020.