Contributors

The Footprint Press is pleased to accept submissions of articles, photographs and artwork for possible inclusion in the magazine. All submissions are reviewed by our editorial committee in terms of relevance and appropriateness for upcoming issues. The decision of the editorial committee is final. Please note we do not accept advertising or promotional material. We do not provide financial compensation for submissions. It is advisable to contact the Footprint Press editor prior to making a submission here.

Articles should be submitted in digital format. Please limit the article to 700 words or less and include the name of the author, place of residence, and any affiliation(s), or contact info (e.g., Facebook). Photographs and photos of artwork need to be in a high resolution digital format for printing purposes.

Ellen Sereda is a Mission, BC based painter and mixed media artist. Her work focuses on portraiture and wildlife, primarily birds, though both are often found in a single piece. She is inspired by the natural world and by stories and myth. “Some of my pieces are straight portraits of the birds I encounter walking through the forests and wetlands around me, other times I use elements of the natural world to tell a story.” Her work can be found in collections throughout Canada, the US, the UK and Australia.

Ronnie Dean Harris aka Ostwelve, is a Stō:lo/St’át’imc/Nlaka’pamux multimedia artist based in New Westminster, BC. He got his start with professional graphic design at the age of 14 and in the same year, he began co-hosting the “When Spirits Whisper” radio show along side Gunargie O’Sullivan on CO-OP Radio 100.5 FM (formerly 102.7 FM).

Over the years, Ronnie has worked on various projects, as an actor, composer and performer.

​He  has also been very active in creating and facilitating workshop programs for youth in media arts and hip-hop. Currently he is working as the Program Director for Reframing Relations with the Community Arts Council of Vancouver delivering programming for indigenous and non-indigenous artists to interface with students and youth in schools and communities around the concept of reconciliation. 

​As an organizer, Ronnie has contributed to various organizations over recent years including the Working Group For Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Wild Salmon Caravan, Wild Salmon Defenders Alliance, Indigenous Climate Action and other related organizations and actions.

For more information about Ronnie’s work as an artist and performer please visit www.ronniedeanharris.com

Angela has written fiction, non-fiction, and poetry since she was able to compose words on the page. She studied creative writing at York University in Toronto, and then completed her studies – turning to journalism – in the Langara Journalism program. As a child she spent a great deal of her time in the natural world, hiking, canoeing, and riding her horse. She was, and is, happiest in the company of non-human animals and the natural world. Our Mother Earth and the rights of all beings have always been her passion and have driven her to join countless marches, rallies, and acts of civil disobedience. In 2019 she and her husband, Eric Chong, founded Extinction Rebellion Fraser Valley which worked with many other Fraser Valley Environmental Groups including Bellingham Extinction Rebellion.

Dr. Claudette Bethune is a practicing clinical scientist in the USA.  Claudette was trained at the University of Washington in Seattle, has a doctorate in drug metabolism and clinical pharmacokinetics, and is qualified to characterize the safety of medicine as well as food nutrients and toxins by the US FDA and international regulatory bodies. She has worked for the Norwegian National Institute for Nutrition and Seafood Safety (NIFES) providing health authorities with risk assessments for consuming farmed fish. Dr. Bethune writes extensively about the health problems of farmed salmon due to the accumulation of toxins such as PCBs from feeds and the promotion of antibiotic resistance by salmon farms.

Dr. Marvin Rosenau is an instructor in the Fish Wildlife and Recreation Program (FWR) at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) where he teaches Fish Ecology and Management as well as Environmental Monitoring at the second-year level in addition to year-long Projects course.  Marvin has a 35-year history of working in freshwater fisheries in the province of British Columbia.  This includes stints as a consultant, in academia, with the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission, and with the provincial Ministry of Environment.   Much of his work, within and outside of government, has focussed on stream and lake habitat-protection and restoration, including issues relating to gravel-removal from streams, lake fertilization and flow-augmentation for fluvial fishes. Marvin worked extensively on lower Fraser River white sturgeon during the 1990s as a BC fisheries program biologist and as a Director and member of the Science Committee within the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society. In the 1990′s he also worked on Water Use Planning flow agreements, which modified stream discharges in a number of hydro-electric projects in south-western B.C. to great success in increasing fish numbers.  Species that he has, in particular, worked on over the years include sturgeon, kokanee, Salish suckers, Coho and Chinook salmon.  He has a BSc (Honours) and an MSc from the Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, and a DPhil from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. In addition, he has won a number of aquatic conservation awards including the: Murray A. Newman Award for Significant Achievement in Aquatic Conservation (1999), the B.C. Wildlife Federation Ted Barsby Trophy Conservationist of the Year (2008), the Canadian Wildlife Federation Roland Michener Conservation Award (2010), and the Totem Fly Fishers Roderick Haig-Brown Conservation Award (2012).

Rebecca McMurray is a lifelong resident of Mission, a local naturalist, and environmental educator. She graduated from the Bachelor of Science in Ecological Restoration Program at BCIT in 2015. Focussing her efforts on inspiring an interest in nature in others, she has worked and volunteered with Metro Vancouver Regional Parks, WildSafeBC, Surrey Nature Centre, Mt Seymour Resorts, Abbotsford-Mission Nature Club and is currently working as a fisheries technician on the Coquitlam River.

Rick was born in the Fraser Valley and grew up exploring the outdoors. His love of the natural world led him into the realm of wildlife photography. Being outside observing and photographing raptors, other birds and wildlife in their natural habitat has become his passion and a subsequently meditative endeavor. He has produced calendars, note cards and coasters from his work. Rick can often be heard saying “I am going out to shoot birds with my Canon”.

Leanne Hodges is primarily a self-taught artist with an academic background and technical training acquired in a variety of visual art programs in the US and Canada. For more than twenty years, she pursued an art practice while developing a remote charter boat company and raising her son, Kai. In the far reaches of coastal BC, Leanne worked as an artist, a DFO contractor enumerating salmon streams, and a guide and naturalist for wildlife charters.

Images of wildlife, coastal landscapes, indigenous cultures, and environmental themes are expressively interwoven in Leanneʼs paintings and mixed media artworks. Technically and creatively, she is attracted to and challenged by cross media formats, with a special interest in life-size models and murals. This gives her artwork a uniqueness and originality not typically found in west coast portraiture, wildlife or landscape art.

These qualities converge in Leanneʼs current interest in paper pulp, an eco-conscious medium capable of lightweight applications and increased pliability for three dimensional pieces. It also lends versatility to highly modelled and textured surfaces in her works on canvas.

Currently her focus is on new works that evoke a spiritual and passionate connection with the wilderness as an intrinsic value. Urgently reaching out to the viewer to behold the sacred union between the human soul and Mother Nature as out higher power…

… before what we have is erased from existence.

Robert Martens grew up in a village founded by Mennonite refugees from the Soviet Union. Still in his teens, he leapfrogged several centuries into the postmodern milieu of student politics at Simon Fraser University. Robert subsequently settled in Abbotsford, BC, where he writes poems and enjoys the spoiled existence of the wealthy West. He has co-written and co-edited histories, anthologies, and periodicals; his most recent publication is a book of poems, hush. Robert is grateful for poetry, music, movies, friends and family, and for his cat, who sleeps soundly through the injustices of this world.