About Riddle Fence
Peter Lannon, Gull Island (2022), 35 mm scan, sizes variable.
Who We Are
Riddle Fence is a hub for fast-paced literature from Newfoundland and Labrador, across Canada, and around the world. We’re unearthing the best contemporary writing and art and we do it four times a year.
We publish poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, features and reviews alongside contemporary art.
Subscribe, submit or advertise today – come join us on the edge of the continent.
Where We Are
Riddle Fence is distributed nationally by Magazines Canada.
In St. John’s, you can find us at the Alt Hotel gift shop, Downtown Comics, Rocket Bakery & Fresh Food, The Rooms, The Travel Bug, and the Bees Knees, or in nearby Tors Cove at Running the Goat Books and Broadsides.
John McDonald, Along the Way (2014), oil on canvas, 23.75 in. x 41.5 in.
Our Fence Builders
Executive Director
Elisabeth de Mariaffi
is the critically acclaimed author of four books of fiction, including the Scotiabank Giller Prize-nominated short story collection How to Get Along with Women (2012), and the novels The Devil You Know (2015) and Hysteria (2018), both of which were named Globe and Mail Best Books of the year, and shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, and most recently, The Retreat (2021) which won the NL Book Award for Fiction. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and has taught fiction and screenwriting at UBC, Memorial University, and the Humber School for Writers. Elisabeth is currently on faculty at the University of Kings College. She makes her home in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Managing Editor
Carmella Gray-Cosgrove
is from Vancouver, BC and lives in St. John’s, NL with her partner and two children. Her debut short story collection, Nowadays and Lonelier, won the BMO Winterset Award. Her writing has appeared in PRISM international, Broken Pencil, The New Quarterly, Freefall and elsewhere. She holds a Masters in Geography from Memorial University.
Associate Editor | Poetry
Randy Drover
is an award-winning writer and a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the assistant publisher at ISER Books, and a long-serving poetry editor at Riddle Fence. His fiction and poetry have been featured in journals and anthologies and have won numerous awards, including the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award. He lives in downtown St. John’s.
Associate Editor | Poetry
Anna Swanson
is a queer writer and librarian living in St. John’s, NL. Originally from Vancouver, BC, she studied writing at the University of Victoria and Memorial University. She came to St. John’s in 2001 to coordinate the first annual Victoria Park Lantern Festival. Her first book of poetry, The Nights Also, won the Gerald Lampert Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has appeared in various anthologies including In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry and The Best Canadian Poetry in English. She loves cold water swimming and is currently working on a project where she creates poems out of garbage found in local swimming holes.
Associate Editor | Fiction
Susie Taylor
Susie Taylor (she/her) is a queer writer living in rural Newfoundland. Her first novel, Even Weirder Than Before, was published in 2019 by Breakwater Books; Vigil, a collection of linked short stories, is brand new in 2024. Taylor’s short stories have appeared in Geist, Prism International, The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, Riddle Fence and elsewhere. In 2016, she was the winner of the Riddle Fence Fiction Prize, for the short story “That Running Girl”, and in 2019, Taylor was the winner of the ArtsNL Lawrence Jackson Writers’ Award. She is a three-time recipient of Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards. She lives with her partner and two cats. When she isn’t writing, she is out running.
Associate Editor | Non-fiction
Meghan Greeley
is a queer writer, editor, performer, and director originally from Corner Brook, NL. Her poetry, prose, and scripts have been published in The Stockholm Review of Literature, Ephemera, Metatron’s ÖMËGÄ project, Riddle Fence, Humber Mouths 2, The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Drama (Vol. 1), and the Playwrights Canada Press anthology Long Story Short. As a playwright, she was a 2016 nominee for the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwrights Prize and was later a resident of both the Tarragon Playwrights Unit and Nightwood Theatre’s Write from the Hip program. Her stage plays have been produced in Toronto, Halifax, and across the island of Newfoundland.
Associate Editor | Visual Art
Tanea Hynes
(@taneahynes) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer from Labrador City, NL. Tanea draws from her personal experiences of working and growing up in an isolated mining town to create works that question the capitalistic nature of extractive industries, while grappling with survival, healing, love and beauty within the cold and relentless landscapes of late-capitalism.
Tanea was most recently Artist in Residence at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, where she developed an exhibition and book titled WORKHORSE, which was open through September of 2021 at The Rooms. WORKHORSE, the limited edition book, is available at www.taneahynes.com.
Designer
Graham Blair
is a printmaker and graphic designer based in St. John’s, Newfoundland specializing in woodcut prints made using methods based on the oldest forms of printmaking.
Sales Assistant
Lauren Hodder
is a visual artist from St. John’s, Newfoundland. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, UK. She has worked across visual art disciplines; including sculpture, video, and printed matter, but is foremost a painter. She is interested in the poetics of colour and shape, and her work is greatly influenced by landscape and nature. She enjoys hiking, reading, hanging out with her cat Phil, and making use of Newfoundland’s wild plants for both their beauty and remedies.
Board Of Directors
Board Chair
William Ping
is a Chinese-Canadian writer from Newfoundland. He is the recipient of the 2021 Landfall Trust and recently completed his Master of Arts in English at Memorial University. His work has previously been featured on CBC, in Riddle Fence, and in the forthcoming anthologies Us, Now and Corner Stor(i)es. His debut novel Hollow Bamboo received MUN’s Department of English Award for Thesis Excellence and will be published in Winter 2023 by HarperCollins Canada. William is currently residing in St. John’s, where he can sometimes be heard on the radio but can most often be found online shopping in the corner of an old house while pretending to work-from-home.
Secretary
Kateryna Melanych
originally hails from Ukraine and made Newfoundland and Labrador her home in the summer of 2022. As a graphic designer, aspiring writer and artist, she finds inspiration in nature, works of other artists and history. That’s why she and her daughter spend their time exploring St. John’s, enjoying the East Coast Trails and visiting The Rooms. Kateryna is thrilled to join the Riddle Fence Board of Directors, and looks forward to contributing and connecting with the province’s arts and culture community.
Treasurer
Tasbeeh Aly
is a finance enthusiast with over four years of experience in investing. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with Honours from Memorial University. Currently, she works as an Investment and Debt Analyst in the Treasury Management Division at the Department of Finance in the provincial government. Outside of work, Tasbeeh is actively involved in community building with the Palestine Action YYT Team, where she contributes to fundraising efforts and raises awareness of Palestinian struggles.
Board Of Directors
Sonja Boon
is an award-winning researcher, writer, teacher, and flutist. Professor of Gender Studies at Memorial University, she is the author of the memoir What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home (WLU Press, 2019), and has published in ROOM magazine, The Ethnic Aisle, Riddle Fence, and Geist, among others. For six years, Sonja was principal flutist with the Portland Baroque Orchestra. She has also appeared with the Toronto Symphony, Hallé Orchestra, and Holland Festival of Early Music.
Board Of Directors
Ed Clarke
is an experienced entrepreneur with specific expertise in the commercialization of technology. Ed recently volunteered as a Board member for five years at the YMCA of Newfoundland and Labrador and holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Université d’Ottawa in Canada. Recently, Ed founded strategic communications platform Cometrics.io in January 2021 and concurrently serves as Venture Partner with Pelorus Venture Capital in St. John’s.
Board of Directors
Amelia Harris
is a graduate of Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie where she completed her Juris Doctor in 2022 with a certificate in Criminal Justice and Aboriginal and Indigenous Law. She was called to the Bar of Newfoundland and Labrador in February of 2023, and has been working at Budden and Associates since 2021, first as an articling clerk, and now as an associate lawyer. Graduating from Concordia University in 2017 with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology, Amelia has a Graduate Diploma from Memorial University of Newfoundland where she did coursework in the Gender Studies Department. During law school, Amelia had the opportunity to spend a term working in the legal clinic at Dalhousie Legal Aid Service and volunteered with the Residential Tenancies Project and the Law Reform Commission of Nova Scotia. In her free time she loves to read and play music and enjoys making her friends and family gifts of knit sweaters, woven scarves or crochet rugs.
Board Of Directors
Shelly Kawaja
is the author of The Raw Light of Morning. Her work has appeared in several magazines such as Horseshoe Literary Magazine, The Humber Literary Review, The Dalhousie Review, and PACE. She was longlisted for the Bridge Prize, the Writer’s Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Fresh Fish Award, and won the GritLIT short fiction contest. Shelly is the Nonfiction Reviews Editor for The Artisanal Writer, a creative writing student in the University of British Columbia’s optional residency MFA program, and a graduate of The Humber School for Writers, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. She lives in Corner Brook with her family.
Marnie Power
CEO/Executive Director, Playful Mindset
She/Her
M.Ed., B.S.W., RSW
Marnie Power is renowned for her work in outdoor, play-based learning. She’s a committed speaker and thought leader who founded and led several ground-breaking organizations in recent years, including Forest School Canada, the Ottawa Forest and Nature School, and now, Playful Mindset, a Canadian charity whose mission is to disrupt adverse childhood experiences through outdoor play.
As a charitable leader, she brings extensive knowledge in governance structure, effective board practices, change management, organizational capacity building, and financial sustainability. As a registered social worker, she’s committed to bringing access, equity and justice to life in tangible ways within the organizations she serves. Marnie believes that organizations and people thrive when there is joy, play, creativity, support, and self-agency showing up at both an operational and governance level, and she loves facilitating opportunities for more of this.
Board of Directors
Krissi Stocks
Originally hailing from the prairies, Krissi Stocks is an emerging writer living in Conception Bay South who has worked in communications and market research. Krissi recently completed the MA in Creative Writing at Memorial and Granta magazine’s inaugural 6-month memoir writing workshop. Her work has been published in untethered, Riddle Fence, and is forthcoming in Chatelaine and Paragon. Krissi deeply admires Riddle Fence and is thrilled to be a part of their vibrant board.
Board Of Directors
Alexandra Trnka
is a writer and editor who was born in Newfoundland and is based in Toronto. She has a BA in philosophy from the University of King’s College and a Master’s in Cultural Studies from McGill. She is the reviews editor for The Ex-Puritan, and regularly contributes to publications including the Montreal Review of Books and the Journal of Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. She recently won Prism international’s 2022 Creative Nonfiction Prize for “Czech is a Difficult Language,” an essay about language, memory, immigration.