Elena Bentley
Interim Editor
Elena Bentley (MA English, University of Toronto) is a multi-genre writer and proud Métis aunty.
Her poetry chapbook, taliped, was a finalist in the 2022 Vallum Chapbook Award and was recently published by 845 Press. Her poems can be found in various literary journals like Arc Poetry, Room, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, and Grain.
In 2022, she received an Honourable Mention in Grain’s Short Grain Contest (poetry category), and in 2021 she was a finalist for CV2’s 2-Day Poem Contest; in addition, she was shortlisted for CANSCAIP’s 2023 Writing for Children Competition (Young Adult category). She is also the author of the children’s picture book The Pickle in Grandma’s Fridge (YNWP, 2022).
Elena has previously served as a board member for the Saskatchewan Book Awards and for JackPine Press; as a juror for the 2023 Alberta Literary Awards; as a book reviewer for SaskBooks; and as the Managing + Poetry Editor for Windscript and spring magazines.
Kate O'Gorman
Fiction & Nonfiction Editor
Kate O'Gorman is a reader. She loves revisiting the work of established authors but admits, there's nothing quite like the discovery of a new voice.
Kate's work has been shortlisted for Room magazine's 2020 Fiction Contest and for Geist magazine's 16th Annual Postcard Short Story Contest. She received 2nd prize for fiction in the 2020 Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story Competition and her short stories have appeared in The New Quarterly, Grain, Qwerty, and elsewhere. Kate holds an MFA in Writing and lives on the Saskatchewan prairie traditionally known as Treaty 6 Territory where she reads, writes, and reviews books at prairieflowerreads.com.
Taidgh Lynch
Interim Poetry Editor
Taidgh Lynch is a poet and caregiver from Killarney, Ireland. He completed an MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. Taidgh was awarded an Independent Artist Grant in 2022 from SK Arts to complete his poetry manuscript Flash and Shadow (under review).
His poetry has appeared in Grain, Prairie Fire, untethered magazine, The Waxed Lemon, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, First Lift Here was published with JackPine Press (2019). Taidgh lives in Saskatoon with his wife and their child with complex medical needs.
Editorial Vision
Grain acknowledges the Indigenous peoples in Saskatchewan and across Canada on whose ceded and unceded lands, including all Treaty lands within Saskatchewan, we live and work. Our team strives to serve its readers by editing and publishing poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and works in other genres that are diverse and divergent, hybrid and experimental, and sometimes unclassifiable—the best of various attitudes and styles. Grain undertakes to provide a safe publishing forum to showcase and support emerging and established writers from all communities, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, and LGBTQ2S+ writers, those of colour, and/or with disabilities. With a focus on nurturing writers based in Saskatchewan, Grain is dedicated to redefining literary excellence.
