The Quebec Writers’ Federation is guided by a board of seven to twenty directors who are elected to a renewable one-year term at an annual general meeting in the spring. Each board member may serve up to five consecutive terms and then must step down for at least two years before standing for the board again. This formula ensures both continuity and the regular infusion of new ideas and energy. The board of directors is responsible for overseeing the work of the executive director and staff.
The QWF Board of Directors is composed primarily of writers, but it can also include members of the broader literary community, such as publishers, editors, academics, booksellers
2026–2027 QWF Board of Directors
Rachel McCrum
President
Rachel McCrum is a poet, performer, editor, and curator who spends her time between Montreal/Tio’tiake and Cacouna in Bas-Saint-Laurent. Originally from Northern Ireland, she lived in Edinburgh, Scotland between 2010 and 2016, where she was the first BBC Scotland Poet in Residence and recipient of a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship. Her debut collection, The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate, translated by Jonathan Lamy and published in a bilingual edition with Mémoire d’encrier in fall 2020, was a finalist for Le Prix de traduction de la Fondation Cole 2022 from the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Her new spoken word show, La belle-mère / The Stepmother, co-written and co-performed with Amélie Prévost, is touring Quebec and Canada in 2025 and 2026 and is available in a bilingual edition from L’Hexagone. Rachel was a finalist for the 2025 Ian Ferrier Spoken Word Prize from QWF. She works part-time as Cultural Coordinator for Heritage Lower St Lawrence and is the vocalist for noise-poetry group Pigs&Wolves.
Katia Grubisic
Vice President
Katia Grubisic is a freelance writer, poet, editor, and literary translator. Her collection of poems What if red ran out was a finalist for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and won the Gerald Lampert award for best first book; she has also won the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation and a Governor General’s Award for translation. She has taught creative writing at the university and college levels, and in the community, has worked in literary magazines and publishing and as a book reviewer. Katia is frequently solicited as a member of literary and grant juries.
Peter Mandelos
Treasurer
Peter Mandelos is a passionate advocate for literature and a lifelong enthusiast of the book industry with nearly 40 years of experience. As Director of Paragraphe Bookstore, Montreal’s premier independent-in-spirit English-language bookstore, he has participated in over 2,000 book events and oversees the store’s involvement in more than 120 literary events annually. Under his leadership, Paragraphe has become a vital hub for local literary culture, supporting both established and emerging voices and enriching Montreal’s literary community.
Leila Marshy
Secretary
Leila Marshy is of Palestinian-Newfoundland parentage, which explains a lot. During the First Intifada, she worked for the Palestinian Mental Health Association in Gaza, and Medical Aid for Palestine in Montreal. In Montreal, she founded a groundbreaking group bringing Hasidim and their non-Hasidim neighbours together in dialogue, and she managed the campaign of the very first Hasidic woman to hold political office in the city. For several years she raised chickens and ran her own baking business. Her stories and articles have appeared in Canadian and American media. Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018 and her collection of short stories, My Thievery of the People, was released in 2025. She is Fiction Editor at Baraka Books and lives in Montreal.
Directors
Loch Baillie
Loch Baillie (he/him) is a writer and editor based in Quebec City. He is the author of two chapbooks, ice, dove, parachute (Cactus Press) and Citronella (Anstruther Press), as well as the forthcoming collection River Running (icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, 2026). He is the poet-in-residence for the Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence and an associate poetry editor at Plenitude Magazine. Loch is currently pursuing his MA in English literature at Université Laval. Find him online at www.lochbaillie.com.
D.M. Bradford
Darby Minott Bradford is a writer and translator based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). They are the author of Dream of No One But Myself and Bottom Rail on Top and translator of House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson and Ring of Dust by Louise Marois. Winner of the 2022 A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and a former Associate Director of programming at the Blue Metropolis Foundation, since 2022 Bradford has worked primarily as an editor and writer in the community, performing and facilitating workshops across the country and providing mentorship and peer assessment. Most recently, Bradford was the 2025 Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence and a Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University.
Alice Goldbloom
Alice Switocz Goldbloom, a longtime Montrealer, has been writing her whole career—mundane government, business, and consulting documents of every kind. In 2020, with a fulfilling career behind her and two children semi-launched into the world, she began writing stories to please herself and share. She writes about being a first-generation Canadian, the small town in Ontario where she grew up, and her discovery of the story of her parents, who survived the Nazi occupation of Poland on the other side of the Jewish ghetto walls. Alice publishes a weekly Substack newsletter, A Considerable Age, which features personal essays.
Pamela Hensley
Pamela Hensley is the managing editor of yolk and creator of the literary podcast How I Wrote This. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize, The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award, and the Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Prior to becoming a writer, Pamela worked as an engineer and senior management consultant in Germany, Japan, the US, and Canada. She holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Western University and an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Michelle Lalonde
Michelle Lalonde is a journalist who was born and raised in southern Ontario. She earned a degree in English literature from the University of Ottawa and a graduate journalism degree from what is now Toronto Metropolitan University. She came to Montreal in 1990 to work at The Globe and Mail‘s Montreal bureau, and in 1991 she joined the staff of the Montreal Gazette, where she has worked as a reporter, columnist, book reviewer, and copy editor.
Ann Lambert
Ann Lambert (she/her) is the author of the Russell and Leduc mystery series, comprising The Birds That Stay (finalist, Concordia University First Book Prize), The Dogs of Winter (finalist, Crime Writers Award of Excellence; winner of an Audiophile award), and Whale Fall. All three books were released as audiobooks narrated by Ann herself. Her new book, featuring a brand-new detective, will be released in 2026. Ann has also written over 30 plays for the stage and radio, many of which have been critically acclaimed and produced in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. She is the co-Artistic Director of Theatre Ouest End in Montreal, dedicated to producing new work that brings together an intergenerational community of both emerging and experienced theatre artists. Ann is also the vice-president of The Theresa Foundation, dedicated to supporting children and their grandmothers, the education of Malawian girls, and alleviating food insecurity in several villages in Malawi.
Rebecca Morris
Rebecca Morris is a Montreal writer, editor, and teacher. Born and raised in Guelph, Rebecca earned an MA in French Literature from Dalhousie and taught high school before turning to writing full time. Her short stories have been widely published and have won the Malahat Review Open Season Award for Fiction and the Humber Literary Review’s Emerging Writers Fiction contest, earned Honourable Mention in Prairie Fire’s Short Fiction contest, and been long-listed in Room Magazine‘s Fiction contest. Her debut novel Other Maps was released in 2024 with Linda Leith Publishing. She is a Banff Centre alumna and the recipient of CALQ and Canada Council Arts grants and was a reader for the 2025 CBC Short Story Prize. Visit her online at rebeccamorris.ca
Antolina Ortiz Moore
Antolina Ortiz Moore was born in Mexico City, where she lived before moving to Canada over twenty years ago. She considers herself a citizen of the world. From an early age, she developed a strong interest in writing, photography, and travel. While in Mexico, she founded ecological and cultural projects and planted more than 11,000 trees in a cloud forest region. She has taught creative writing workshops and served on literary juries.
Her novels explore themes of migration, empathy, and the sheer improbability of existence. They have been finalists for the prestigious Nadal and Rómulo Gallegos Literary Awards. In 2023, her work received the Juan March Cencillo Award in Spain, and in 2024 she won the Poniatowska Foundation Prize. Her most recent novel, El día que no paró de llover, was published by Tusquets in Mexico. Antolina writes in Spanish from Canada. You can read more at: https://antolinaortizmoore.com
Gillian Sze
Gillian Sze is the author of multiple poetry collections. Her latest book, Quiet Night Think, received the 2023 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Gillian has also written books for children. Her debut picture book, The Night Is Deep and Wide, was listed as one of the Best Books for Kids in 2021 by the New York Public Library. Her work has been translated into Slovenian, French, Italian, Turkish, Hebrew, Spanish, and Greek. She lives in Montreal where she is an assistant professor at Concordia University.
Marcia Walker
Marcia Walker’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reads, Prairie Fire, Bellevue Literary Review, The New Quarterly, The New York Times, CBC radio, and elsewhere. She has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, PRISM’s fiction and non-fiction prize, and the Writers’ Union of Canada short prose competition. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Banff Centre, and Saari as well as grants from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, CALQ, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her debut short story collection, Things to Think About When Looking at the Sky, is forthcoming with Freehand Books in spring 2027. Before becoming a writer, Marcia worked in theatre and as a lawyer.
Alain Zaloum
Alain Zaloum is a veteran television writer/director and producer as well as a writer/director of several award-winning feature films for Lionsgate, ABC, and Equinox, including the drama David and Fatima, co-starring Martin Landau and legendary screen icon Tony Curtis in his final screen performance. He was co-creator and writer of the CBC series The Detectives, for which he was nominated twice for a Canadian Screen Award as Best Writer. He is currently senior writer and story-editor on several true-crime series for Cineflix and Attraction, including Forensic Factor for Netflix. Born in Cairo, Egypt, Alain grew up in Montreal in the immigrant neighborhood of NDG and always sought to produce shows exploring the diversity of voices and cultures he’s encountered. Alain has a BA in Film and TV production from the University of Southern California. He is a member of the WGC, DGC, QWF, QEPC, BIPOC TV & FILM, and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.