Our Team
Adriana Oniță
Founder & Advisor
Adriana Oniță is a poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor, and publisher. She was awarded the Canadian Literature Centre Poetry Prize in 2019, and was shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2021. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Misremembered Proverbs (above/ground press, 2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). Her multilingual poems have been published in CBC Books, The Globe and Mail, Tint Journal, Glass Buffalo, filling Station, The Ex-Puritan, In:cite, The Polyglot, Imaginations, Transcultural, and The Humber Literary Review. She is the founding editor of The Polyglot, and the editorial director of the Griffin Poetry Prize. She lives between Edmonton and Sicily. Discover more of her work at adrianaonita.com.
Maria Teodora Barbu
Creative Director (Strategy)
Maria Teodora Barbu is a multidisciplinary artist, creative strategist, and community weaver. As ARTISTA, she creates immersive experiences of poetry, sound, and performance art, rooted in ancestral invocation, and inviting inner reflection and relational connection. She is a self-published author of her debut, limited-run chapbook, The Circle’s Cycle,, and her work has been featured in a number of places including the Edmonton Poetry Festival and the Disquiet International Literary Program.
Beyond her artistic practice, Maria works across strategy, partnerships, and community development—leading brand and growth initiatives at Capital Marketing (home of Coffee News across Alberta), supporting purpose-driven businesses through her consultancy, 99 Futures, leading relational workshops with Circling Canada, and helps shape collaborative programs and community-rooted experiences that uplift multilingual and cross-cultural creativity with The Polyglot Creative Hub & Magazine.
Catalina Morales Vélez Creative Director (Systems)
Catalina Morales Vélez is a creative non-fiction writer who lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta. A native of Colombia, she depicts in her work common places, situations and scenarios filled with magical realism. Despite her work being mainly rooted in words, her creations come to life in other mediums like drawing, the 9th art–comics, stop-motion, among others.
As a child, she always loved to hear and tell stories, an appetite that soon evolved into a profession as she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication at the North Catholic University. This parallel to diplomas in Marketing and Advertising. Plus, a Graduate Diploma in Urban Communications from Pontificia Bolivariana University.
Catalina is a member of the Writers Guild of Alberta, and her work has been featured in Colombia, Canada, and U.S.A. magazines. She is currently working on her first manuscript and continuously supports literary initiatives worldwide.
Find her at catalinamoralesv.com and @catalinashineinc
Tamara Aschenbrenner, Managing Editor (Magazine)
Info coming soon.
Tariq Malik
Community Catalyst
Info coming soon.
Lauren Carter
Creative Director (Operations)
Info coming soon.
Brett Boyd
Publication Designer
Info coming soon.
Gian Carlo (Geo) Estoesta
Social Media Coordinator
Info coming soon.
Ting Pimental-Elger
Community Catalyst
Info coming soon.