Maple Tree Literary Supplement (MTLS) is a triannual journal with 90% Canadian content.
Maple Tree Literary Supplement (MTLS) is a cutting-edge 21st century triannual online journal. MTLS promotes Canadian writing and allied Canadian arts – and occasional scholarship – with emphasis on culturally diverse contribution. There is a special interest in new writing and arts, especially with a view to representing Canada’s diversity. We encourage and promote visible minority literature and arts alongside the mainstream. This is symbolized in our inclusive and diverse editorial board. MTLS is a platform for old and fresh voices, and has a mandate to short-circuit any tendency towards elitism in Canadiana. This does not, however, mean that quality will be sacrificed for quantity. Our emphasis on inclusion is conditional: contributions should be robust and of high quality, or reflect promise. While celebrating the old, we wish to pave a way for the new and exciting. We are open to cooperation with other Canadian arts initiatives with the same goals in different communities across the country. Although MTLS’ emphasis is on Canadian writing and arts, it nevertheless holds a conversation with the world by featuring about ten percent content from contributors around the globe.
Editorial Board
George Elliot Clarke (1)
Reviews & Contributing Editor
Recently the Poet Laureate of Toronto (from 2012 to 2015) and currently Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-2018), George Elliott Clarke is arguably one of Canada’s most accomplished poets. A native Africadian (African-Nova Scotian), George Elliott Clarke has authored 8 verse works, including the acclaimed novel-in-poetry, Whylah Falls (1990); the Governor-General’s Award-winning, narrative lyric suite, Execution Poems (2000); the poetry-plus-photo book, Illuminated Verses (2005); and the sassy, brash collections, Blue (2001) and Black (2006). Not averse to music or drama, Clarke has also published his third opera libretto, Trudeau: Long March / Shining Path (2007). His first collection in translation (into Romanian by Flavia Cosma) Poeme Incendiare (Incendiary Poems) was published in 2007.
In addition to being a poet, playwright and literary critic, Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. He taught English and Canadian Studies at Duke University (1994-1999). During 1998-99 he was appointed the Visiting Seagrams Chair in Canadian Studies at McGill University, then became professor of English at the U. of T. in 1999. Honors include the Portia White Prize for Artistic Achievement from the Nova Scotia Arts Council, a Bellagio Center Fellowship (1998), the Outstanding Writer in Film and Television Award (2000) and three honorary doctorates; a Doctor of Laws degree (Dalhousie University, 1999) a Doctor of Letters degree (University of New Brunswick, 2000) and Doctor of Letters from the University of Alberta (2005). He was given the Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award in 2004, and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellows Prize, Montreal, 2005. He earned the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Black Alumni Association Faculty Achievement Award and the Undergraduate Teaching Award, all at the University of Toronto, in 2005. Planet Africa TV gave him the Planet Africa Renaissance Award, Toronto, 2005. In October, 2006, he was appointed to the Order of Nova Scotia, and received an Honorary Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) from the University of Waterloo. In 2008, he was knighted as an officer of the Order of Canada.
Clarke was a 2013-2014 William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor at Harvard University. His first major fiction work, a novel, The Motorcyclist, was published by Harper Collins in 2016. He also has a new poetry collection, Gold (Gaspereau, 2016). It is an addition to his series of ‘colouring’ books.
John Ralston Saul (2)
Advisory Board
Award-winning essayist and novelist, John Ralston Saul has had a growing impact on political and economic thought in many countries. Declared a “prophet” by TIME magazine, he is included in the prestigious Utne Reader’s list of the world’s 100 leading thinkers and visionaries. His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has received many national and international awards for his writing, most recently the Pablo Neruda International Presidential Medal of Honour from the Chilean government. His Massey Lectures, The Unconscious Civilization, won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, as well as the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues. His reinterpretation of the nature of Canada, Reflections of a Siamese Twin, also won a Montador Award and was chosen by Maclean’s as one of the ten best non-fiction books of the twentieth century.
Saul is best known for his philosophical trilogy–Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, and The Unconscious Civilization. This was followed by a meditation on the trilogy–On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism. He has published five novels, including The Birds of Prey, an international best seller, as well as The Field Trilogy, which deals with the crisis of modern power and its clash with the individual. It includes Baraka or The Lives, Fortunes and Sacred Honor of Anthony Smith, The Next Best Thing, and The Paradise Eater, which won the prestigious Premio Lettarario Internazionale in Italy. De Si Bons Americains is a picaresque novel in which he observes the life of modern nouveaux riches Americans.
He is General Editor of the Penguin “Extraordinary Canadians” project, co-Chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, Patron and former President of the Canadian Centre of International PEN. He is also Founder and Honorary Chair of French for the Future, Chair of the Advisory Board for the LaFontaine-Baldwin lecture series, Honorary Chair of the Project Advisors’ Committee for Evergreen at the Brickworks, Distinguished Patron of the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars, and Patron of PLAN (a cutting edge organization tied to people with disabilities), Engineers without Borders, and the Canadian Landmine Foundation. A Companion in the Order of Canada (1999), he is also Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France (1996). His 14 honourary degrees range from McGill and the l’Université d’Ottawa to Herzen State Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Olive Senior (3)
General & Contributing Editor
Olive Senior is the award-winning author of four books of poetry, three books of fiction and four non-fiction books on Caribbean culture including the Encyclopedia of Jamaica Heritage and Working Miracles: Women’s Lives in the English Speaking Caribbean. Her short story collections include Summer Lightning (winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize), Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Discerner of Hearts. Her poetry books include Talking of Trees, Gardening in the Tropics (winner of the F.J. Bressani Literary Prize), Over the Roofs of the World (finalist for the Governor General’s Award and Cuba’s Casa de la Americas Prize) and Shell (finalist for the Pat Lowther Award). Olive Senior’s stories and poems have been translated into several languages and broadcast widely, including the BBC’s ‘Book at Bedtime’ and Radio 4 (UK), and CBC Radio, among others. Her short story ‘You Think I Mad, Miss’ was produced and performed as ‘Mad Miss’ by Theatre Archipelago Mat 27-June 12 2005 at Artword Theatre, Toronto.
David W. Atkinson (4)
Advisory Board
David W. Atkinson was, until recently, the President of Carleton University. He also occupied the same capacity at Brock University, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and now is the incumbent President of MacEwan University in Edmonton. Atkinson was born in Sunderland, England, and immigrated to Canada when very young. Educated in Calgary, he attended the University of Indiana, where he was an All-American in Cross Country, and a member of the Big Ten Championship Cross Country Team. He returned to the University of Calgary, where he completed his B.A. degree (1970), and subsequently earned an M.A. (1971), and a Ph.D. degree (1975) in English.
Atkinson was a faculty member at the University of Lethbridge from 1977 to 1991, where he took on increasingly senior administrative positions, including Director of Applied Studies, Chair of Religious Studies, Associate Dean of Arts and Science, and Dean of Student Affairs. In 1991 he was appointed Dean of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan. In 1997 he was appointed President of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and in 2005 President of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Most recently, he was appointed President of Kwantlen University College in Surrey, British Columbia, which in May, 2008 was designated as Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He took office on July 1, 2008. Atkinson has held faculty positions in both English and Religious Studies. He has published widely in both disciplines.
Michèle Rackham Hall (5)
Founding Reviews and Contributing Editor
Michèle Rackham Hall received a PhD in English Literature from the English department at McGill University, Montreal, during which time she held a doctoral Canada Graduate Scholarship from SSHRC. Her area of specialization is Canadian poetry and visual arts. She is a Professor of English at Algonquin College’s School of Media and Design.
Stephen Brockwell (6)
General Editor
Stephen Brockwell has several collections of poetry, amongst which are The Wire in Fences (Balmuir Book Publishing), The Cometology, and Fruitfly Geographic (which won the Archibald Lampman Award), and The Real Made Up. He is the co-editor of the online journal Poetics. He has written reviews and articles for The Danforth Review, Rubicon and Books in Canada. Recent work has appeared in Arc,Prairie Fire, the Fiddlehead, the Antigonish Review, and Queen St Quarterly.
Nicole Ng (7)
Editor-at-Large
Nicole Ng works in the science field. She is one of those rare specie in whom science and literature find an accord.
Patrick Iberi (8)
Founding Art Editor
Patrick Iberi has a background in philosophy. He is greatly interested in existentialism and works as a freelance writer, with attention (in varying degrees) on essays on the arts, literary criticism and poetry. His writings have appeared in both print and online publications. A forth coming collection of poems tentatively titled “Echoes of a desolate voice “is in the works.
Philip Adams (9)
Drama Editor
Philip Adams was born in Creemore, Ontario, when the brewery was a creamery. In 1982, he moved to the Yukon where he was Artistic Director of Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse. He was also the Artistic Director of Mulgrave Road Theatre in Guysborough, Nova Scotia. His focus is to identify, develop, and produce new Canadian plays. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Hardley Art and works as a dramaturge, director, and actor. His focus is to identify, develop, and produce new Canadian plays. Under his Artistic Directorship (1995–1998), Nakai established a national reputation as a “development” company, providing northern playwrights with opportunities to create new work. In 1996, it created the New Theatre North Playwrights’ Festival, in which senior Canadian playwrights and dramaturges were brought in to work with local playwrights. Nakai forged stronger links with other theatre centres across the country. Plays Nakai developed during this period that have seen outside productions include Cloudberry by Cristina Pekarik, The Fasting Girl by Miche Genest, and A Tree Fell in the Forest by Lawrie Crawford.
Adams also began developing relationship with Perseverance Theatre of Juneau, Alaska, the company’s geographically closest neighbour. Adams has worked with PEN Canada and Diaspora Dialogues as events coordinator. He currently lives and works in Toronto.
Amatoritsero Ede (10)
Publisher and Managing Editor
Amatoritsero Ede is an internationally award-winning poet. He has worked in the past as a Book Editor with a major Nigerian trade publisher, Spectrum Books. He was the 2016 INPUTS Writer-in-Residence at the University of Bremen, Germany; the 2005-2006 PEN Canada Writer-in-Residence at Carleton University’s English Department, and a 2013 speaker at the prestigious Canada Seminar of Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He won the 1998 All Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature with his first poetry collection, A Writer’s Pains & Caribbean Blues; a second prize in the first May Ayim Award, a Black German literature prize, in 2014. His second poetry collection, Globetrotter & Hitler’s Children, was nominated for the prestigious Nigerian Literature Prize in 2013. He appears in 11 poetry and 1 creative non-fiction anthologies in Germany, Canada, Nigeria and the USA. His poetry has been translated into Romanian and Turkish.”
Ede received a doctorate in Literature in 2013 from Carleton University as a scholar of Global Anglophone African and World Literature and Postcolonial Theory. His current academic research is at the intersection of Comparative Literature, Translation and World Literature. His critical reflections on African literature and culture, “Narrative Moment and Self-Anthopologizing Discourse” and “The Politics of Afropolitanism” have appeared in Research in African Literatures and the Journal of African Cultural Studies respectively.
Lequannne Collins-Bacchus (11)
Copy Editor
Lequanne Collins-Bacchus studies philosophy and film at Carleton University. She has volunteered with the socially-conscious, independent bookstore, A Different Booklist in Toronto and, as a copy-editor and film reviewer for leftist campus-community newspaper, The Leveller in Ottawa.
Chris Tse (12)
Spokenword Editor
Chris Tse is a Canadian spoken word poet of Chinese descent. He placed second at the 2011 Poetry Slam World Cup and captained the Ottawa Capital Slam team to a national championship at the 2010 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. The former Capital Slam champion has produced a book of poetry and an EP, both entitled An Ode to My Afro, and is currently working on a poem-picture book entitled The Man at the Top of the World. He has performed on stages from Vancouver to Paris to Kumasi, and his work has appeared on CBC, CTV, and in numerous newspapers across the country. The Vancouver native graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa with his bachelor’s of journalism, and has reported on human rights abuses in Ecuador and Ghana. He currently works as a motivational speaker and leadership facilitator for Free The Children and Me to We.
