Board Members & Staff
Board Members
President
Michael Murphy currently works as the Associate Director of Alumni Engagement for the Faculty of Education at UBC. He has over 20 years hospitality experience with a strong focus in managing large scale events. He is passionate about learning new ways of thinking and being. Michael considers social justice to be at the core of all of his work and he weaves in issues of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in every area of his life. Michael respectfully acknowledges that he was born and raised on the traditional lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation (Squamish Nation).
Treasurer
Briana Stewart – Briana Stewart is a Senior Advisor, Sustainability & ESG with the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). She has 15 years’ experience in the banking and finance industry with a strong familial background in accounting. Previously, she worked for UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and has actively participated in numerous OSCE exams for UBC FoM, UBC Pharmacy, the College of Nursing Practitioners and the Medical Council of Canada’s QE and NAC exams for over 16 years. Briana is a local musician who has written and recorded several EPs and singles with various producers across the Lower Mainland. She has performed around the West Coast with numerous successful song placements in various music libraries, playlists and TV series.
At Large
Heidi Clark, B.A., B. Ed., Dip ESL, M.Ed. (UBC) has had a long term love of literature and delights in sharing her passion with her students and colleagues. Heidi has worked for the VSB for three decades within the classroom as an elementary school teacher and as well as in a district capacity as an Early Literacy Mentor. Heidi currently teaches a grade 3/4 classroom where literacy is the backbone of the classroom. Mornings start with #ClassroomBookAday – reading aloud a picture book, a poem is shared after recess, a chapter book is always read aloud in the afternoon, and wordplay is judiciously sprinkled throughout the day. Heidi loves connecting her students with others throughout the world with events such as the Global Read Aloud, Mystery Skypes, as well connecting virtually with authors and illustrators. Heidi successfully applied on behalf of her school for an Indigo Love of Reading grant. She is thrilled that over the course of the next three years she gets to go book shopping to her heart’s content for her school. She strongly believes that students need to see themselves reflected in the literature they pick up. As Dr Rudine Sims Bishop wrote, “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.”
Nazanine Hozar was born in Tehran, Iran, at the onset of the Iranian Revolution. She moved to Canada during the Iran-Iraq war. Her first novel, Aria, tells the story of the interconnected lives of a group of Iranians in the 30 years leading up to the 1979 revolution. Aria is published by Knopf Canada and is a top 10 Globe and Mail bestseller. It has been translated into over 10 languages, as well as short listed for The Prix Medicis and other literary prizes in Canada and France. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and is currently working on her second novel.
Sarah James lives in the West Kootenay region of BC and spends as much time as possible in the mountains and under the canopy of the forest. She has worked in the post-secondary sector for almost twenty years, has an interdisciplinary background in Literary Studies and Library Science, and is currently a librarian at Selkirk College. Sarah sits on the council of the Mir Centre for Peace and is involved with advocacy work around Intellectual Freedom and Information Literacy.
Jieun Lee is currently the Editor and Project Manager at Annick Press, where she acquires and edits children’s books across genres, particularly stories that empower readers and reflect underrepresented experiences. Jieun holds an Honours BA in English and Anthropology from the University of Toronto and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of British Columbia. She is also a volunteer with IBBY Canada and previously was a literacy facilitator with the London Public Library.
Jonathan Middleton is an artist, curator, and publisher working between Toronto and Vancouver. Middleton currently serves as executive director of Art Metropole (Toronto) and previously as partner and editor-at-large at Information Office, a Vancouver-based design and publishing studio. He served as director/curator of Vancouver’s Or Gallery from 2007 to 2017, during which time he established the Or’s bookstore and Berlin satellite space. Middleton also served as director/curator of the Western Front Exhibitions Program (1999-2005), and was a founding member of the art periodical Fillip, serving on its editorial board and as its first publisher until 2008. Middleton has served on numerous boards, including Artspeak, Kokoro Dance, the Independent Film Video Alliance, and Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres. He was a founding member of the Artist Run Centres and Collectives Conference and maintains an active role in arts advocacy through his work as chair of the Artist Run Centres and Collectives of Ontario.
Yasuko Thanh is the award-winning author of four books, including Floating Like the Dead and Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, which won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her bestselling memoir, Mistakes to Run With, was nominated for the Jim Deva Prize. She has written for The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and Hazlitt. Her fifth book, the novel The Falling Maria, is set for release in 2027.
Rhea Tregebov is the author of eight collections of poetry. Her most recent, Talking to Strangers, was published by Véhicule Press in April 2024. She has published two novel and is the author of five children’s picture books. Tregebov served as Chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada from 2021 to 2023. Born in Saskatoon and raised in Winnipeg, she now lives and writes in Vancouver, where she is Associate Professor Emerita at the School of Creative Writing at UBC.