Susan Rose April was born in Lowell Massachusetts; raised in nearby Dracut; graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science; earned a Master’s degree in Geophysical Science from The University of Chicago; and spent 30 years in sustainable development, renewable energy and protection of and advocacy for the environment. She also earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. She is 100% French-Canadian American.
Joshua Barrière est étudiant à la maîtrise en études littéraires à l’Université Laval. Son mémoire porte sur l’édition critique de la correspondance entre Yvonne Le Maître et Rosaire Dion-Lévesque. Parallèlement à ses études, il travaille comme parajuriste en litige pour une institution financière. Il détient également un DESS en comptabilité.
Joshua Barrière is a master's student in literary studies at Université Laval. His thesis deals with the critical edition of the correspondence between Yvonne Le Maître and Rosaire Dion-Lévesque. In parallel with his studies, he worked as a paralegal in litigation for a financial institution. He also holds an advanced graduate diploma in accounting.
Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia. Her latest poetry collection Monarch examines overlooked histories from the US West (Cornerstone Press, 2023).
Rich Paul Cooper is a novelist and literary critic from South Louisiana. Currently he resides inTexas where he is a professor of creative writing at Texas A&M University. His novel Le Drac du Meschacébé will be available in 2025.
Yves Couture (French; born in 1942; MA Philosophy, McGill University, in the early 1970s) was a consultant to a town planning firm, taught philosophy, raised horses and two boys, became a restaurateur, and pursued other endeavors. He is now a blacksmith, eclectic reader, a perpetual admirer of Seneca and Spinoza. A man of the Renaissance.
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-four full-length poetry collections, with Now Flourish Northern Cardinal forthcoming from Small Harbor Publishing in November 2025. He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. His ancestors (originally Demarest) were French Huguenots who left France seeking religious freedom in the 17th century.
Jeanne Douillard grew up in a Petit Canada in western Massachusetts. Now an independent scholar, she probed the history of the French in the Americas for over twenty-five years. Her passion led her to write a book and give talks throughout New England. Jeanne’s first published poem is found in the anthology Heliotrope: French Heritage Women Create. She currently lives in Greenfield, MA and is a member of the Poetry Seminar out of Charlemont, MA.
Samara Cole Doyon is a poet and award-winning children’s book author with Haitian roots, living on unceded Wabanaki / Abenaki territory. She earned both a Lupine Award and an International Literacy Association Award for her debut picture book, Magnificent Homespun Brown. All three of her books have received the coveted Kirkus Star in pre-publication review.
Born in rural Quebec in a French-speaking household, Lisanne Gamelin spent most of her twenties traveling, bouncing from one job to another. She has worked in event planning, including a Montreal literary festival, where she’s often apologized for not being literary enough, having only studied History and cinema in college. Since her last publication in Résonance, She was published as part of the Chronicling the Days non-fiction collective work. She also graduated from Toronto Film School in scriptwriting in 2023, and one of her feature scripts, “Planted, Not Yet Buried,” was quarterfinalist at the 2025 ScreenCraft Horror Competition.
Daphne Stratton Gignac graduated from Yale this year with a B.A. in history. She grew up in southern Maine in a family of Canadian expats, her dad from Montreal and her mother from Winnipeg. During her time at Yale, Daphne was the 2023 recipient of the Ray Lamontagne essay prize, a speaker at the Franco North American Studies Symposium, and received an honorable mention for the 2025 Richard Hegel Prize for her senior essay.
Jade Laffiette is pursuing a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing at the University of South Alabama. Her work has either appeared or is forthcoming in the following: in We Did It First: Poems from Poets of Mobile, Alabama; River and South Review; and Hoxie Gorge Review. She served as prose editor for the Oracle Literary Review (2023–2024) and also plans to serve for the upcoming year. She is also a member of Spoken Word of Mobile, a poetry collective that meets every third Monday.
Jean LeBlanc was born and raised in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where his father settled after moving to the United States from Quebec. Jean now lives in northwestern New Jersey, newly retired from 25 years as a professor of writing and literature. His poems have been published in numerous journals, and is most recent collection is Terrible Terrain: Poems Inspired by the Life of Lavinia Dickinson (Santi Arts Publishing, 2023).
Shelbey Leco is a 30-year-old native New Orleanian and mixed media artist. Her style was heavily influenced by her grandmother growing up. As a child, when spending time with her grandmother, Leco enjoyed coloring in giant coloring books. Her grandmother soon realized that Leco went through art supplies rather quickly. So, her grandmother taught her the art of Zentangle, by creating various patterns and shapes within negative spaces. Over time, Leco’s work developed into mixed media, however repetition and pattern work remain present in her work today.
Denis Ledoux’s credits include We Were Not Spoiled/A Franco-American Memoir (2014), A Sugary Frosting (2016), My Eye Fell Into the Soup (2017), and French Boy (2023). His Turning Memories Into Memoirs / A Handbook for Writing Lifestories has gone into three editions (1992, 1998, 2006). His account of his early Canadian ancestors. Here to Stay/Lives in 17th Century Canada will be published in October 2025.
A past contributor to Résonance, Paul Marion is the author of the poetry collections Union River and Lockdown Letters as well as the prose collection Portraits Along the Way: 1976-2024. He is also the editor of the writings of young Jack Kerouac, Atop an Underwood, and author of Mill Power, which chronicles the modern revival of the historic city where he was born, Lowell, Mass. He lives in Amesbury, Mass.
Pauline Mornet is a performer and writer based in San Francisco. As many French migrants, they have been pulled since a young age across many borders and this piece of performative writing on a game of Mikado, captures those geographical and affective entanglements around a seemingly childlike game. Pauline has previously published in Voiceworks, Island Magazine, and the peer-reviewed academic journal Performance Research. You can find their performance work and writing at paulinemornet.com
Janet O’Neil, née Roy, is the poet Joseph H. Roy’s granddaughter, only child of one of his sons. Born in Lowell, Mass., she attended Ste. Jeanne d’Arc School and then Presentation of Mary Academy in Hudson, N.H., where she and Louise Peloquin were high school classmates. She shares her interest in Franco-American heritage and the fruit of her research into the Roy family tree with her husband, five children, and her grandchildren.
Louise Peloquin inherited a passion for everything Franco-American from her mother, community figure Marthe Biron Peloquin, journalist at Lowell’s French newspaper L’Etoile, acquired by her father Louis-A. Biron in 1910. Holder of two PhDs, Peloquin analyzed Franco-American identity and culture in her University of Paris thesis. Her teaching and academic research career unfolded in the U.S. and in France, where she published L’Identité culturelle: les Franco-Américains de la Nouvelle-Angleterre (Les Editions Didier, Paris, 1983) and “Foyers Francophones aux Etats-Unis,” numéro 70 des Etudes de Linguistique Appliquée, revue universitaire de la Sorbonne (Didier Erudition, Paris, 1988).
Writer and performer Susan Poulin is the author of fourteen plays, seven of which feature her alter ego, Ida LeClair, “the funniest woman in Maine.” Susan writes the popular Maine humor blog, Just Ask Ida, and is the author of Finding Your Inner Moose: Ida LeClair’s Guide to Living the Good Life and The Sweet Life: Ida LeClair’s Guide to Love and Marriage. She lives in southern Maine with her husband, artist Gordon Carlisle.
Born into a French-speaking parish in Manchester, NH in the 1950s, Jean Pouliot experienced Vatican II, French-Canadian culture in crisis, and the political tumult of the 1960s. Jean’s songs, stories, and poems examine, express, and share his heritage. He holds a BA in psychology and a master’s degree in Catholic ministry. He is married with two grown sons, is retired after forty years in IT, and lives in New England. His books can be found on Amazon and Substack.
Fabrice Poussin’s poetry and photography work has appeared in hundreds of magazines worldwide. Most recently, his collections In Absentia, If IHad a Gun, Half Past Life, and The Temptation of Silence were published in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, by Silver Bow Publishing.
Suzanne S. Rancourt, Abenaki/Huron, Quebecois, Scottish descent, USMC & Army Veteran, award winning author of four books: Billboard in the Clouds; murmurs at the gate; Old Stones, New Roads; and Songs of Archilochus. A multimodal EXAT, CASAC, with degrees in psychology, writing, Aikido, Iaido. Her honors include being chosen as a Writing the Land Project fellow and a guest artist at University of MI’s New England Literature Program. A Veteran Peer Mentor, Suzanne continues to teach writing, and travel.
Claire Raymond is the author of ten books of feminist scholarship, most recently, Mohawk Rebel: Shelley Niro’s Art and New York State (State University Press of New York, 2024). Publishing as Claire Millikin, they are the author of ten books of poetry including Magicicada (Unicorn Press 2024), winner of the 2024 Foreword Indie Award for Poetry, as well as a 2025 Independent Press Award Distinguished Favorite. Originally from Georgia (USA), with deep family roots in the southeastern United States, Claire now lives in coastal Maine and teaches for the University of Maine system and for the Maine Media Workshops and College.
Steven Riel is the author of two full-length collections of poetry (Edgemere and Fellow Odd Fellow), as well as three chapbooks, the most recent being Postcard from P-town, which was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in several anthologies and numerous periodicals. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. www.stevenrielwriter.com
Megan St. Marie is the president of Modern Memoirs, Inc., a private publishing company based in Amherst, Massachusetts that specializes in memoirs and family histories. A graduate of Smith College and Simmons University, she is a seventh-generation Vermonter of Franco-American and Irish descent. The mother of seven children in a multiracial, foster-adoptive, queer, blended family, Megan is also a children’s book author, reviewer, and scholar publishing under the name Megan Dowd Lambert. Learn more about Megan’s business at www.modernmemoirs.com and about her career in children’s literature at www.megandowdlambert.com.
Jeri Theriault’s recent awards include the 2023 Maine Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the 2023 Monson Arts Fellowship, and the 2022 NORward Prize (New Ohio Review). Her poems and reviews have appeared in The Rumpus, The Texas Review, The Atlanta Review, The Asheville Review, Plume, and many other publications. Her recent collections are Self-Portrait as Homestead; Radost, my red; and (M)other. She is the editor of Wait: Poems from the Pandemic. Jeri lives in South Portland, Maine.
Amber M. Valette is an ecopsych-focused writer, artist, therapist, and life coach in California. Her work has been published in Ruminate Magazine, Glass Mountain literary journal, Brickplight, Illuminations literary magazine, Stonecoast Review literary arts journal, and Ragazine. Connect with her at www.wellintheworld.com
Joan Vermette has spent the last 30 years creating groundbreaking digital customer experiences for Fortune 500 companies, and in her spare time exploring and advocating for her Franco-American heritage. These days, she’s focused on writing a historical novel about a 19th-century Acadian schoolteacher, and renovating 25 acres in Southern Maine using regenerative agriculture principles and practices.
Francis Dylan Waguespack is an activist, writer and teaching artist from New Orleans, with family roots in the River Parishes and across Southeast Louisiana. Waguespack is the former CEO of a national nonprofit working to advance housing justice for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC young people. He is a teaching artist and oil painter and maintains a studio practice in Chicago.