Our editors and Staff Writers

 

Noelle Allen

Staff Writer

Noelle Allen is the owner and publisher of Wolsak and Wynn, where she has worked for twenty years. She purchased the press from Marja Jacobs, who began the press with Heather Cadsby in 1982 as a poetry-only publishing company and promised that poetry would always be at the heart of the W&W publishing program. Noelle had worked in book retail, in marketing and publicity and in academic publishing before joining the press. She has also served on many boards and committees within the industry, including as the chair of the Literary Press Group, the co-chair of gritLIT: Hamilton’s Readers’ and Writers’ Festival and as the chair of the Literary Advisory Committee for the Hamilton Arts Council. Currently she is also working with Supercrawl, Hamilton’s Music and Arts Festival, to organize the literary programming.

 

James Cairns

Staff Writer

I’m a professor of Law & Society at Wilfrid Laurier University. My academic writing focuses on political culture, social movements, and theories of democracy (for example, in my books The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope, (UTP); and The Democratic Imagination: Envisioning Popular Power in the Twenty-First Century (with Alan Sears, UTP). I’m currently working on a book of essays around the theme of crisis. I love reading fiction with a political bent (Gary Barwin’s Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted; Elif Batuman’s Either/Or), and nonfiction that reads like a novel (Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother; Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger). I live in Paris, Ontario, where I’m on the board of the Riverside Reading Series.

 

Jaclyn Desforges

Staff Writer

Jaclyn Desforges is the 2023/2024 Mabel Pugh Taylor Writer In Residence at McMaster University and Hamilton Public Library. She’s the queer and neurodivergent author of Danger Flower (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther Books), winner of the 2022 Hamilton Literary Award for Poetry and one of CBC's picks for the best Canadian poetry of 2021. She's also the author of Why Are You So Quiet? (Annick Press, 2020), which was shortlisted for a Chocolate Lily Award and selected for the 2023 TD Summer Reading Club. Jaclyn is a Pushcart-nominated writer and the winner of a 2022 City of Hamilton Creator Award, a 2020 Hamilton Emerging Artist Award for Writing, two 2019 Short Works Prizes, and the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Jaclyn was a finalist for the 2023 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize and her writing has been featured in literary magazines across Canada. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing and lives in Hamilton with her partner and daughter.

 

Dana Hansen

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

Dana Hansen (she/her) is a professor of English literature, language, and communications at Humber College in Toronto, a writer and book reviewer with work in a number of publications, a librarian-in-training, and the founding publisher and editor-in-chief of Hamilton Review of Books. An eclectic reader with a particular affinity for essays, nonfiction, and first novels, she feels privileged to have the opportunity to work with such a dedicated team at HRB working to highlight the outstanding and diverse work of writers in Hamilton and beyond. She lives in Waterdown with her family.

 

Alex Kerner

HRB Podcast Host

Alex Kerner is the host and producer of the Review's podcast. He is an avid reader and reviewer of books. You can find some of this bookish thoughts on his blog, Instagram and Goodreads. He also contributes reviews for Spring Magazine. Alex lives in Hamilton with his family and professionally is a lawyer in the area of labour law.  

 

nico mara-mckay

staff writer

Nico Mara-McKay (they/them) is a historian, writer, and editor based in Tkaronto (Toronto). Their literary criticism has appeared in Quill and Quire, THIS Magazine, Broken Pencil Magazine, and elsewhere. Ephemeral Record captures trans and queer histories, and you can also find Nico at nicomaramckay.com.

 

vinh nguyen

staff writer

Vinh Nguyen is an educator and writer. His writing appears in Brick, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, and Grain. He edits nonfiction for The New Quarterly. His memoir The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse is forthcoming in 2025. 

 

Jennifer Rawlinson

Staff Writer and Webmaster

Jennifer’s love of stories began with ghosts. She carried this passion for exploring personal and cultural anxieties via stories through her Professional Writing program at York University and Publishing program at Toronto Metropolitan University. After landing in Hamilton, Jennifer interned with Wolsak and Wynn where she continues to work as Production Coordinator and Co-editor for the speculative fiction imprint, Poplar Press. She also works with gritLIT: Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival as Festival Assistant. In her free time, Jennifer can be found writing her own spooky stories and investigating things that go bump in the night.

 

Jessica Rose

Staff Writer

I’m a writer, editor, arts organizer and digital storyteller with a passion for the written word. A graduate of Carleton University’s School of Journalism, my writing has appeared in THIS Magazine, Hamilton Magazine, Quill and Quire, the Humber Literary Review, among many others. I’m the Marketing Manager at gritLIT: Hamilton’s Readers and Writers Festival and a digital marketer for a number of arts organizations and other not-for-profits. With a background in educational publishing, I am passionate about highly engaging, accessible children’s literature. My first book will be released with Orca Press in 2024. I’m proud to bring my love of books, especially non-fiction, to the Hamilton Review of Books.

 

Brianna Wodabek

Managing Editor

I am a graduate of the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College. Through this program, I discovered a dream I didn’t know I had. Currently, I work in publishing at one of the “big five” in Digital Marketing, but I started my career in independent publishing, so I hold every aspect of publishing close to my heart. Every story is important and I am grateful for my role, and privilege, to help bring these stories into readers’ hands. While I aim to read widely, I often find myself coming back to mystery, thriller, and suspense novels.